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Minutes of the annual meeting of the State Literary and Historical Association

Proceedings of the State Literary and Historical Association of North Carolina

PORTRAIT OF RALEGH IN THE THIRD EDITION OF "THE HISTORY
OF THE WORLD," 1617
The Only Portrait of Him Published During His Lifetime
^\]f-hn oo.as"
PROCEEDINGS
OF THE
State Literary and Historical Association
of North Carolina
Compiled by
R. D. W. CONNOR
Secretary
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Edwabds & Beoughton Pbintinq Co.
State Pbintees
1919
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The North Carolina Historical Commission
J. Bbyaw Grimes, Chairman, Raleigh..
D. H. Hill, Raleigh. T. M. Pittman, Henderson.
M. C. S. Noble, Chapel Hill. Frank Wood, Edenton.
R. D. W. Connor, Secretary, Raleigh.
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Officers of the State Literary and Historical Association
of North Carolina
1917-1918
President James Spbunt, Wilmington.
First Vice-President Miss Maey O. Graham, Raleigh.
Second Vice-President C. C. Peaeson, Wake Forest.
Third Vice-President Miss Carrie Jackson, Pittsboro.
Secretary-Treasurer R. D. W. Connor, Raleigh.
Executive Committee
(With Ahove Officers)
Edwin Greenlaw, Chapel Hill. A. L. Brooks, Greensboro.
Miss Julia Alexander, Charlotte. Joseph B. Cheshire, Raleigh.
Miss Adelaide Fries, Winston-Salem.
PURPOSES OF THE STATE LITERARY AND HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION
"The collection, preservation, production and dissemination of State litera-ture
and history;
"The encouragement of public and school libraries;
"The establishment of an historical museum;
"The inculcation of a literary spirit among our people;
"The correction of printed misrepresentations concerning North Carolina;
and
—
"The engendering of an intelligent, healthy State pride in the rising
generations."
ELIGIBILITY TO MEMBERSHIP—MEMBERSHIP DUES
All persons interested in its purposes are invited to become members of
the Association. There are two classes of members: "Regular Members,"
paying one dollar a year, and "Sustaining Members," paying five dollars a
year.
RECORD OF THE STATE LITERARY AND HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION
(Organized October, 1900)
Fiscal Paid up
Years. Presidents. Secretaries. Membership.
1900-1901 Walter Claek Alex J. Peild 150
1901-1902 Henry G. Connor Alex J. Feild 139
1902-1903 W. L. PoTEAT George S. Fraps 73
1903-1904 C. Alphonso Smith Clarence Poe 127
1904-1905 Robert W. Winston Clarence Poe 109
1905-1906 Charles B. Aycock Clarence Poe 185
1906-1907 W. D. Pruden Clarence Poe 301
1907-1908 Robert Bingham Clarence Poe 273
1908-1909 Junius Davis Clarence Poe 311
1909-1910 Platt D. Walker Clarence Poe 440
1910-1911 Edward K. Graham Clarence Poe 425
1911-1912 R. D. W. Connor Clarence Poe 479
1912-1913 W. P. Few R. D. W. Connor 476
1913-1914 Archibald Henderson R. D. W. Connor 435
1914-1915 Claeenoe Poe R. D. W. Connor 412
1915-1916 Howard E. Rondthaler R. D. W. Connor 501
1916-1917 H. A. London R. D. W. Connor 521
1917-1918 James Sprunt R. D. W. Connor 453
1918-1919 James Sprunt R. D. W. Connor 377
THE PATTERSON MEMORIAL CUP
Conditions of Award Officially Set Forth by Mrs. Patterson.
To the President and Executive Committee of the Literary and Historical
Association of North Carolina:
As a memorial to my father, and with a view to stimulating effort among
the writers of North Carolina, and to awaken among the people of the State
an interest in their own literature, I desire to present to your society a
loving cup upon the following stipulations, which I trust will meet with
your approval, and will be found to be just and practicable:
1. The cup will be known as the "William Houston Patterson Memorial
Cup."
2. It will be awarded at each annual meeting of your association for ten
successive years, beginning with October, 1905.
3. It will be given to that resident of the State who during the twelve
months from September 1st of the previous year to September 1st of the
year of the award has displayed, either in prose or poetry, without regard
to its length, the greatest excellence and the highest literary skill and genius.
The work must be published during the said twelve months, and no manu-script
nor any unpublished writings will be considered.
4. The name of the successful competitor will be engraved upon the cup,
with the date of award, and it will remain in his possession until October
1st of the following year, when it shall be returned to the Treasurer of the
Association, to be by him held in trust until the new award of your annual
meeting that month. It will become the permanent possession of the one
winning it oftenest during the ten years, provided he shall have won it
three times. Should no one at the expiration of that period, have won it so
often, the competition shall continue until that result is reached. The names
of only those competitors who shall be living at the time of the final award
shall be considered in the permanent disposition of the cup.
5. The Board of Award shall consist of the President of the Literary and
Historical Association of North Carolina, who will act as chairman, and
of the occupants of the Chairs of English Literature at the University of
North Carolina, at Davidson College, at Wake Forest College, and at the
State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts at Raleigh, and of the
Chairs of History at the University of North Carolina and at Trinity College.
6. If any of these gentlemen should decline or be unable to serve, their
successors shall be appointed by the remaining members of the Board, and
these appointees may act for the whole unexpired term or for shorter time,
as the Board may determine. Notice of the inability of any member to
act must be given at the beginning of the year during which he declines to
serve, so that there may be a full committee during the entire term of each
year.
7. The publication of a member of the Board will be considered and
passed upon in the same manner as that of any other writer.
Mes. J. Lindsay Patterson.
Si PPLEMENTAEY RESOLUTION
According to a resolution adopted at the 1908 session of the Literary and
Historical Association, it is also provided that no author desiring to have
his work considered in connection with the award of the cup shall communi-cate
with any member of the committee, either personally or through a
representative. Books or> other publications to be considered, together with
any communications regarding them, must be sent to the Secretary of the
Association and by him presented to the chairman of the committee for
consideration.
AWARDS OF THE PATTERSON MEMORIAL CUP
1905
—
John Chaeles McNeill, for poems later reprinted in book form as
"Songs, Merry and Sad."
1906—Edwin Mims, for "Life of Sidney Lanier."
1907
Kemp Plummer Battle, for "History of the University of North Caro-lina."
1908
Samuel A'Court Ashe, for "History of North Carolina, Vol. I."
1909
^Clarence Poe, for "A Southerner in Europe."
1910—R. D. W. Connor, for "Cornelius Harnett: An Essay in North Carolina
History."
1911
Archibald Henderson, for "George Bernard Shaw: His Life and
Works."
1912—Clarence Poe, for "Where Half the World is Waking Up."
1913
Horace Kephart, for "Our Southern Highlanders."
1914—J. G. deR. Hamilton, for "Reconstruction in North Carolina."
1915
William Louis Poteat, for "The New Peace."
1916—No Award.
1917—Mrs. Olive Tilford Dargan, for "The Cycle's Rim."
1918—No Award.
WHAT THE ASSOCIATION HAS ACCOMPLISHED FOR THE STATE-SUCCESSFUL
MOVEMENTS INAUGURATED BY IT.
1. Rural libraries.
2. "North Carolina Day" in the schools.
3. The North Carolina Historical Commission.
4. Vance statute in Statuary Hall.
5. Fire-proof State Library Building and Hall of Records.
6. Civil War Battlefields marked to show North Carolina's record.
7. North Carolina's war record defended and war claims vindicated.
8. Patterson Memorial Cup.
Prefatory Note
The addresses included in this bulletin were prepared for presenta-tion
at the ^NTineteenth Annual Session of the State Literary and His-torical
Association of ]^orth Carolina which was to have been held at
Raleigh, October 28-29, 1918 ; but as the date for the session approached
the epidemic of influenza which was raging throughout the State and
Kation seemed to make it unwise to hold it. Since the addresses had
been prepared for a special occasion, it has seemed appropriate to the
Association to publish them in this form for permanent preservation.
R. D. W. Connor, Secretary.
Contents
PAGE
Introductory by the President 13
George Davis: President's Annual Address. By James Sprunt 15
Conference on Anglo-American Relations:
Introductory. By President James Sprunt 29
Ralegh, and British Imperialism. By Edwin Greenlaw 30
Sir Walter Ralegh as a Man of Letters. By Frank Wilson Chaney
Hersey 42
Raleigh's Place in American Colonization. By Charles M. Andrews 55
England and the Birth of the American Nation. By William Thomas
Laprade 77
The Converging Democracies of England and America. By William
E. Dodd 85
Anglo-American Diplomatic Relations During the Last Half Century.
By Charles H. Levermore 99
Social and Political Ideals of the English-Speaking Peoples. By
George Armstrong Wauchope 124
PROCEEDINGS
OF THE STATE LITERARY AND HISTORICAL
ASSOCIATION OF NORTH CAROLINA
Introductory Remarks Prepared by the President
The Wineteentli Annual Session of the State Literary and Historical
Association of l^orth Carolina is now convened.^ Before the Invocation
of Divine Guidance, it seems to me to be proper to say a few words.
Bishop Anderson has said: ^^In the great crisis through which this
country has been going for some past years the thing that decided the
issue was simply the question of right or wrong in the minds of the
people." Said he, "I believe I have opportunities for feeling the public
pulse. I do not think the people generally have asked many questions
about international law as between us and our enemy. They have not
been much concerned about European boundaries. I do not believe that
our people think that this is a commercial war. JSTo, it seems to me
that the great masses of our people have been asking old-fashioned ques-tions
about right and wrong. Is it right or is it wrong to keep our
word, to observe our treaties, to murder and slaughter innocent women
and children, to order the devastation of cities and churches and libra-ries,
to try to bring about a holy war between Mohammedans and Chris-tians?
Is it right or is it wrong to instigate all kinds of intrigue and
espionage and lying amongst people, to teach a doctrine of the state
which relieves the individual of all his moral obligations and which
instigates barbarous immoralities? The bulk of our people are facing
the issues of the day on a straight moral question : are things right or
wrong? And the great heart of America is rising every day higher and
higher in a moral passion. It says these things are wrong and they
can't endure in the world."
Every human experience has a counterpart in Holy Scripture. The
experiences through which our nation has been passing are strikingly
illustrated by the experience of the Hebrews in the days of King Heze-kiah.
The neighboring nations had been overwhelmed and carried away
captive by Sennacherib, King of Assyria, who was striving for world
dominion with all the brute force and ruthlessness at his command. In
the course of time this haughty King made demands upon Hezekiah and
his people to which they yielded until the insults were galling beyond
endurance and then they began to resist. The Assyrian army swept
forward. One city in Judah after another was captured and destroyed.
Jerusalem was besieged by a mighty army. Sennacherib's agents began
a propaganda among the Hebrew people and soldiers, to undermine
their morale and their faith. "Let not Hezekiah deceive you," they
^The session of course was not held.
14 !N'oKTH Caeolina Historical Association
cried, "for lie shall not be able to deliver you. Beware lest Hezekiab
persuade you saying, Jehovah will deliver us. Hath any of the gods
of the nations delivered his land out of the hand of the King of Assyria ?
Where are the gods of Hamath and Arphad ? And have they delivered
Samaria out of my hand ? Behold, thou hast learned what the Kings of
Assyria have done to all lands by destroying them utterly: and shalt
thou be delivered?"
Frightfulness and boastfulness were the weapons of the ancient
Assyrian heathen as well as of the modern German heathen. Hezekiah
met the taunts, the threats, and the menaces of the King of Assyria on
his knees before the King of Kings. He confessed the greatness and
the power of Jehovah above all gods and he said to his people: "Be
strong and courageous, be not afraid nor dismayed for the King of
Assyria, nor for all the multitude that is with him: for there be more
with us than with him; with him is an arm of flesh; but with us is
the Jehovah our Grod to help us fight our battles."
Hezekiah's faith in God was richly rewarded. By a terrible inter-position
of Providence, 185,000 Assyrian soldiers were stricken dead
before the gates of Jerusalem, and Sennacherib and the remnant of his
army fled back "with shame of face to their own land."
Acknowledgment of the Lord of Hosts and reliance upon His might
have turned the tide of many a battle since the days of Hezekiah. You
will recall how Philip of Spain, the most cruel and the most mighty
monarch of his time, tried to crush out civil and religious liberty in the
little land of Holland. His armies laid siege to Leyden and it seemed
as if all hope were gone, but those sturdy Hollanders were looking to
God and by a most timely Providential interference they were de-livered.
That same Philip assembled what was known as his Invincible
Armada for the crushing of civil and religious liberty in England.
And as far as human eye could see his Armada was invincible and it
looked as if England was doomed. But as John Richard Green well says,
the England of that day was a land of one book, and that book was the
Bible, and their faith was in the God of the Bible. By a mighty inter-vention
of wind and wave, God destroyed the Invincible Armada and
delivered England.
You will also recall, in the history of our own State, how Cornwallis
was pursuing General Greene and was about to capture or destroy his
little army and how Greene and his army were saved by the great
storm which turned the Catawba River into an impassable flood, and
you will recall how the very same thing happened again at the Yadkin
River. With this army reinforced, Greene fought the battle of Guilford
Court House which was the turning point in the American Revolution.
The Bible and history are full of these divine interferences and they
encourage us to turn our hearts today, with faith and confidence to
the God of hosts as we battle for liberty and justice and righteousness
in the earth.
George Davis 16
George Davis^
By James Sprunt
President of the State Literary and Historical Association
Francis Hall said:
"Life has been called a pilgrimage. It is one in many respects, and the
simile is never more applicable than when we make, at certain intervals,
a halt in the onward march of our ideas, to revert to the contemplation of
times gone by, and endeavor again to bring out the lineaments of events
and objects, which, like the rich and delicate-carved work of some ancient
cathedral, we perceive to be growing daily more indistinct, and in danger
of being finally blended into a mass of things, but nothing certain."
I have also thought of Doctor Trudeau's words:
"As a man nears the end of the earthly journey, and the evening comes and
the shadows lengthen, and the work is done, when there is no longer any
future to look forward to in this world, and much of the joy of life has dis-appeared
from the present, he naturally turns his face not unwillingly to the
past, and is not at all averse to living over again for others some of the days
of sunshine and shadows, of pleasure and pain, and of strenuous activity
through which he has passed."
And so from the treasure house of abiding memories, the playground
of old age, I have drawn pen sketches of some Cape Fear men in
varied walks of life whose names should live among the immortals of
the Old :N'orth State.
At the intersection of two prominent streets in the City of Wilming-ton
in full view of our majestic river, there stands a heroic portrait
statue in bronze; its face towards the Cape Fear; the right hand ex-tended
with a characteristic gesture, the left hand rests lightly upon
the furled banner of the Lost Cause. It is the effigy of George Davis,
whose wisdom illustrated the principles of law and equity, whose
eloquence commanded the admiration of his peers, who was beloved for
his stainless integrity, and who, shining in the pure excellence of virtue
and refinement, exemplified with dignity and simplicity, with gentle
courtesy and Christian faith, the true heart of chivalry in Southern
manhood.
In early youth I attended an excellent Wilmington Academy known
as Jewett's School, in which, one day of the week was devoted to ex-ercises
of declamation.
The Wilmington legal bar at that time included such distinguished
men as the Wrights, Hills, Meares, Holmes, Empie, London, Hall,
^Prepared for the President's Annual Address.
16 North Carolina Historical Association
Cutlar, "Waddell, Poisson, Strange, Person, George Davis, in which
Mr. Davis was facile princeps. His masterful eulogy of Henry Clay
and other notable orations, had already established his reputation as
the most eloquent public speaker of the lower Cape Fear. Our pre-ceptor
encouraged his pupils to attend out of school hours the sittings
of our Superior Court of Law when an important civil or criminal
case was likely to engage an array of talented contestants; but when
it was whispered that Mr. Davis, as he was always called, would speak,
our boys, many of whom were the sons of prominent lawyers, assembled
with one accord in the Court Room, to study his style and vocabulary
and if possible to imitate this acknowledged leader in public debate and
pleadings. So I may say that almost from my childhood I had been
taught to reverence Mr. Davis and to link his personality with things
that are true and honest and just and pure and lovely and of good
report. Mr. Davis never appeared in a cause without careful and
thorough preparation. He was not a genius. All his achievements as
an orator, a counsellor, and pleader, were the result of studious appli-cation
and untiring industry, and we were taught that talent differs
from genius, as voluntary power differs from involuntary power. Mr.
Davis illustrated the sacred parable of the man to whom ten talents
were given and who brought to his lord ten talents more. I often walked
behind him on his way from his office to his residence and watched
with respectful and absorbing interest his gesticulations on the street,
while he rehearsed his speech for the following day. Seneca said that
it was the nature of a great mind to be calm and undisturbed, and
Cicero said that it was the part of a great mind to force itself away
from the emotions, and the reasoning faculty out of the rut of custom.
There was a dignity and repose in Mr. Davis' nature which repelled
familiarity and in his greatest orations he held the emotions in control.
He shone as a great light in Cape Fear history, and, although the
orb of his day has descended in the West, its reflected radiance still
gilds and glorifies the scenes he described so eloquently in words which
cannot die. A few years before the death of Mrs. Jefferson Davis it
was my high privilege to entertain frequently at my summer home at
Narragansett Pier that accomplished lady, and to enjoy the recital of
her charming reminiscences of scholars and statesmen eminent in the
public life of Washington and of Richmond in her day and generation
;
among whom she frequently mentioned Mr. J. P. Benjamin and Mr.
George Davis.
When I informed her by letter of the death of our Mr. Davis, she
replied in terms of deep emotion and affectionate regard
:
George Davis 17
"I am able to sit up a little, and regret that I am not strong enough to
say as much about dear Mr. George Davis as my heart dictates.
"He was one of the most exquisitely proportioned of men. His mind
dominated his body, but his heart drew him near to all that was honorable
and tender, as well as patriotic and faithful, in mankind. He was never
dismayed by defeat, but never protested. When the enemy was at the gates
of Richmond he was fully sensible of our peril, but calm in the hope of
repelling them, and if this failed, certain of his power and will to endure
whatever ills had been reserved for him.
"His literary tastes were diverse and catholic, and his anxious mind found
relaxation in studying the literary confidences of others in a greater degree
than I have ever known in any other public man except Mr. Benjamin.
"My husband felt for him the most sincere friendship, as well as confi-dence
and esteem, and I think there was never the slightest shadow inter-vened
between them.
"I mourn with you over our loss, which none who knew him can doubt
was his gain."
Of him our distinguislied scholar and writer, Prof. Henry E. Shep-herd,
said to me
:
"Mr. George Davis's name was as a household word on the Cape Pear in
my circle. He was a masterful illustration of all the forces, social, moral,
intellectual, that portray the civic virtues, and make for the higher and
nobler types of righteousness." And in a review of the great men of North
Carolina of the Revolutionary period, and of later epochs up to the war
between the States, and since its termination, "a galaxy of moral excellence,
the most perfect, of intellectual ability, the most eminent, of fidelity, the most
unwavering."
Cicero Harriss said
:
"I consider one illustrious man with an approach to care and with a
desire to do all justice with whom I put him in comparison. That man is
the peerless orator of the Cape Fear, the lawyer and statesman, the almost
incomparable citizen, beloved and venerated by his friends and neighbors and
highly respected by all with whom he came in contact. I entirely agree with
the estimate of the personal character, the varied ability and the public
services of the late George Davis as expressed in chaste, unaffected language,
but with discriminating care by his kinsman and former fellow citizen,
Samuel A. Ashe. Rightly to appreciate the great Wilmingtonian one has to
know him as he was at home and performed his labors, public and private,
among the people whom he loved best on earth and who knew best his own
transcendent worth and glorious talents. It was said with truth several
times that Mr. Davis did his very greatest work there in the presence and
hearing of his own people, that his finest law arguments, most symmetrical
orations on historical and literary subjects, were delivered in the old opera
house to a Cape Fear audience. I think this must have been true, and yet
that elegant Chapel Hill address was worthy of a great orator. It is not
for this writer to try to be ornate and critical on such a subject, even if he
2
18 N^ORTH Carolina Historical Association
could be on any topic. Mr. Davis so commanded the veneration and the
deep outward respect of his true friends that they prefer to speak of him
with unaffected simplicity. So simple and yet majestic was his own life
that ornamentation in describing his attributes would be out of place. There
never was a better illustration of the simple life ever lived by man of great
intellect and deep emotions. He seemed always under control. Even the
occasional bursts of imagination in his speeches were pruned of luxuriance.
There was all through his public addresses a rigid classicism, which, however,
was not chilling, but had a polished surface of geniality. Never gushing,
he never repelled. You watched for the noble passages, but he indulged in
unusual feeling sparingly. Hence his power. It was the power of a truly
great imaginative mind. Behind it all, you felt, was the genuine heart of
the orator. I recollect that the whole packed audience one night was moved
to mighty enthusiasm when he apostrophised the Cape of Fear in a short
concluding paragraph of what had been one of his greatest orations."
It was my rare fortune to stand in intimate relation to Mr. Davis
in his later years. From my youth up, I had regarded him with ardent
personal devotion. In private conversation in his home circle with his
charming family, in every walk of his honored life, he was to me the
highest type of a Christian statesman, philosopher and friend, and it
was because of this relation that upon his greatly lamented death, 23rd
of February 1896, I was entrusted by the Chamber of Commerce with
the preparation of a sketch of his life and service. We approached the
task to which we were assigned with a profound sense of our inadequacy
to offer anything worthy of that noble life, but with an earnest desire
to add to all the true and beautiful things that had been said of him,
some memorial that would more fully set forth the labors and achieve-ments
of the foremost citizen of our Cape Fear section. To do this we
thought nothing could be more appropriate than a free use of his own
writings and the testimony of his contemporaries at the various periods
of his life. What he said, what he wrote, and what he did, obtaining
thus a clearer conception and reminder of his high morality, his great
ability and his rare eloquence. We were also moved to this course by
the hope that it might inspire the rising generation with a desire to
study his career, and in a grateful people the resolve to rescue from
oblivion his scattered compositions.
This hurried tribute in the Chamber of Commerce comprised in part
extracts from his great eulogy on Henry Clay, his famous address at
the State University of 1855, "The Men of the Cape Fear in the Olden
Times,'^ inspiring many of his hearers to study this important patriotic
subject which had been long dormant in the mind of our cultivated
people. His great address in 1856 before the Literary Societies of the
Greensborough Female College, "A Rich and Well Stored Mind,^' his
George Davis 19
"Peace Congress" speech on the 2nd of March, 1861, his great Tilden
and Vance campaign speech, 3rd of November, 1876, of which the
gifted Doctor Kingsbury said
:
"The speech to which we listened is a very memorahle one. It will long
abide with us as one of those felicitous, rounded, finished efforts of a highly
endowed and noble intellect that will be a memory and a joy forever.
"As a composition the effort of Mr. Davis was very admirable. There was
humor, there was sarcasm, there was an exquisite irony, there were flashes of
wit, and there was an outburst of corrosive scorn and indignation, that were
wonderfully artistic and effective. At times a felicity of illustration would
arrest your attention and a grand outburst of high and ennobling eloquence
would thrill you with the most pleasurable emotions. The taste was exceed-ingly
fine, and, from beginning to end, the workings of a highly cultured,
refined, graceful and elegant mind were manifest. There were passages
delivered with high dramatic art that would have electrified any audience on
earth. If that speech had been delivered before an Athenian audience in the
days of Pericles, or in Rome when Cicero thundered forth his burning and
sonorous eloquence, or in Westminster Hall, with Burke, and Fox, and
Sheridan among the auditors, he would have received their loudest acclaims,
and his fame would have gone down the ages as one of those rarely gifted
men who knew well how to use his native speech and to play with the touch
of a master on that grand instrument, the human heart.
"We would refer at length, if opportunity allowed, to the scheme of his ar-gument,
to his magnificent peroration, in which passion and imagination
swept the audience and led them captive at the will of the magician; to the
exquisitely opposite illustrations, now quaint and humorous and then deli-cate
and pathetic, drawn with admirable art from history and peotry and
the sacred Truth—to these and other points we might refer.
"How can words, empty words, reproduce the glowing eloquence and en-trancing
power of the human voice, when that voice is one while soft as
Apollo's lute, or resonant as the blast of a bugle under the influence of
deep passion? How can human language bring back a forgotten strain or
convey an exact impression made by the tongue of fire when burdened with a
majestic eloquence?"
His last public address was a matchless memorial of his beloved
Chief, Jefferson Davis, at the Opera House in 1889, on which occasion
he spoke without notes, nor was there a stenographer present, but I
had the honor of preserving that memorable tribute and of putting it
in print as the last public utterance of this beloved leader of the Cape
Fear. It is as follows
:
"The last appearance of Mr. Davis before a general audience was at the
mass-meeting in the Opera House, in 1889, to do honor to the memory of
ex-President Davis. He was already in feeble health, and unequal to an
oration, but the tenderness and sweetness of his personal reminiscences, as
he presented the side of his friend's character that was least known to the
world, will abide in the memory of those who heard him, like the lingering
20 ^ORTH Carolina Historical Association
fragrance of flowers that have faded and passed away. In the concluding
passage, in which he spoke of the President's religious faith, he uncon-sciously
reflected his own simple and abiding trust in God; and we can find
no words which more fittingly describe the Christian life of our Mr. Davis,
than those that he uttered of his dead chieftain:
" 'He was a high-souled, true-hearted Christian gentleman, and if our poor
humanity has any higher form than that, I know not what it is. His great
and active intellect never^ exercised itself with questioning the being of God,
or the truth of His revelations to man. He never thought it wise or smart
to scoff at mysteries which he could not understand. He never was daring
enough to measure infinite power and goodness by the poor, narrow guage
of a limited, crippled human intellect. Where he understood, he admired,
worshipped, adored. Where he could not understand, he rested unquestion-ingly
upon a faith that was as the faith of a little child—a faith that never
wavered, and that made him look always undoubtingly, fearlessly, through
life, through death, to life again.' "'
In tliat address also occurs the following passage^ which is worthy of
all preservation as the declaration of one of commanding intellect and
wide experience, after he had reached the limit of three-score years
and ten, as to what attribute he considered of the highest value in
human character:
"My public life was long since over; my ambition went down with the
banner of the South, and, like it, never rose again. I have had abundant time
in all these quiet years, and it has been my favorite occupation, to review
the occurrences of that time, and recall over the history of that tremendous
struggle; to remember with love and admiration the great men who bore
their parts in its events.
"I have often thought what was it that the Southern people had to be most
proud of in all the proud things of their record? Not the achievement of
our arms! No man is more proud of them than I, no man rejoices more in
Manassas, Chancellorsville and in Richmond; but all nations have had their
victories. There is something, I think, better than that, and it was this,
that through all the bitterness of that time, and throughout all the heat of
that fierce contest, Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee never spoke a word,
never wrote a line that the whole neutral world did not accept as the very
indisputable truth. Aye, truth was the guiding star of both of them, and
that is a grand thing to remember; upon that my memory rests more proudly
than upon anything else. It is a monument better than marble, more durable
than brass. Teach it to your children, that they may be proud to remember
Jefferson Davis."
There were also in my collection many notes of legal arguments,
personal reminiscences, interviews and private utterances.
With the preparation of this memorial, I was inspired with the
ambition to collect from many sources an epitome of his incomparable
compositions, addresses, political speeches, arguments at the bar, in
the home circle, in the local associations in which his primacy is uni-versally
conceded, and in his development as is revealed in the broaden-ing
ranges of his professional and political career, when he was the
George Davis 21
colleague of Judali P. Benjamin, the trusted counsellor of Jefferson
Davis, shaping some august decree and guiding the destiny of the new-born
Confederacy, and to write a biography more worthy of such an
honored theme.
"We see ourselves his cherished guests,
His partners in the flowery walk of letters, genial table talk,
of deep disputes and graceful jests;
While now his properous labor fills the lips of men with honest
praise and sun by sun, the happy days
Descend below the golden hills."
In pursuance of this purpose, for several years after his death I
gathered, sometimes day by day, the desired material for this labor of
love in many manuscrij^ts and memoranda, which I carefully secreted
in a private desk, which would be safe from intrusion. Vain hope
!
During my temporary absence from home, a new Scotch domestic,
eager to prove her efficiency, invaded this sanctum sanctorum, emptied
the drawers of their precious contents into the furnace fire and utterly
destroyed these priceless papers, and my ambition to be another minor
Boswell. But I doubt not there will arise from this membership a
capable biographer, with every characteristic requisite; knowledge,
sympathy, sweetness and light, the elements that mark as well as form
the philosophic mind. Would that his gifted and beloved kinsman,
Samuel A'Court Ashe, who in his masterful presentation of Mr. Davis'
portrait to the Supreme Court of JSTorth Carolina, October 19th, 1915,
paid tribute to his great exemplar, or his devoted personal friend,
Eugene S. Martin, who as dean of the Wilmington Bar was requested
by the ^orth Carolina Bar Association to review the life and service
of their distinguished and lamented brother, which he did in a eulogy
of great power and beauty before the Association in Asheville in August,
1915 ; or his chief biographer. Judge H. G. Connor, who presented to
the City of Wilmington in an eloquent oration the bronze effigy in
memory of our great leader of the Cape Fear on the 20th, of April,
1911; or our accomplished scholar and historian, J. G. deR. Hamilton,
might add to their perennial laurels a more extended life of him ^Vhom
history shall cherish among those choicer spirits, who, holding their
conscience unmixed with blame, have been in all conjunctures true to
themselves, their Country and their God."
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Anglo-American Relations
IN
Commemoration
OF THE
Tercentenary of Sir Walter Raleigh
ANGLO-AMERICAN RELATIONS
Explanatory Note
The death of Sir Walter Raleigh ou October 29, 1618, ended the life
of the most notable figure in the histoiy of Anglo-American coloniza-tion—
a figure of the first rank in the history both of Great Britain and
of the United States. The three hundredth anniversary of his death
found these two nations in close alliance in defence of those ideals of
English liberty which Raleigh, more than any other man, was instru-mental
in planting in America and in defence of which he suffered
martyrdom. It seemed, therefore, to a group of distinguished British
statesmen and scholars appropriate that the two great English-speaking
peoples of the world should take some note of the Tercentenary of his
death by commemorating in some suitable manner his life and services
and his contributions to our civilization. Accordingly under the leader-ship
of Dr. Israel Gollancz, Secretary of the British Academy, a Raleigh
Tercentenary Committee was organized in London, with Viscount
Bryce as Honorary Chairman, and under the auspices of this com-mittee
appropriate exercises were held in London.
In the spring of 1918, Dr. Gollancz consulted Dr. Walter Hines Page,
American Ambassador at the Court of St. James, as to the most suit-able
means of having a corresponding commemoration in the United
States. Dr. Page, accordingly, suggested the State Literary and His-torical
Association of ISTorth Carolina as the logical organization to
undertake the task in the United States and brought the matter to the
attention of the secretary of the Associatioc in a letter in which he
wrote
:
Next October will be the centenary of Sir Walter Raleigh. It has been
proposed by certain learned men here that some sort of celebration be made
of the fact and they have asked me what corresponding celebration, or co-operation,
or contribution to such a celebration I thought could be hoped
for from the United States. It at once came to my mind to write to you.
I do not know anybody who has a keener interest in Sir Walter Raleigh
than your Society, nor anybody who could with greater propriety take up
this interesting task.
No particular program has yet been made but they would welcome any
suggestions that you might make. Let me say off-hand that you might
organize a celebration in North Carolina having appropriate addresses and
any other proceedings that occur to you, and the English might have a cor-responding
thing here on the same day and letters could be written by your
group of people to them, and by them to you, to be read at each celebration
and perhaps telegrams exchanged also.
The suggestion seemed so appropriate that Dr. James Sprunt, Presi-dent
of the Association, and the Executive Committee, determined to
26 J^ORTH Carolina Historical Associatiois"
turn tlie 1918 session into a ^'Conference on Anglo-American Relations
in Commemoration of tlie Tercentenary of Sir Walter Raleigh" ; and
a program was accordingly prepared.
A committee of the Association, appointed to draft an address of
greetings to the Raleigh Tercentenary Committee, prepared and sent
the following address
:
TO THE SIR WALTER RALEIGH TERCENTENARY COMMITTEE:—
Greetings and hearty acclaim! The State Literary and Historical Association
of North Carolina hails with undisguised pleasure the new era upon which we
have entered. The study of English history by Americans and the study of
American history by Englishmen are no longer to be pursued as a means
of finding and accentuating differences, but as an opportunity of bringing
into clearer relief those common traditions and common ideals which alone
form the basis of an indissoluble union. iSir Walter Raleigh has been to
our country chiefly a link with a romantic but remote past. In the days
that are before us he will still remind us of an historic past, but he will
bind us not less to England that was, but more to England that is.
North Carolinians have never ceased to remember with pride that to Sir
Walter Raleigh and Sir Humphrey Gilbert history owes the first thought of
a new England on American soil, and that the colony planted by Raleigh on
Roanoke Island was the first colony of Englishmen to be settled in the new
world. Though the settlement failed, as men count failure, its undaunted
founder lived to see Roanoke become a stepping-stone to Jamestown and thus
to know that through his initiative the language and institutions of Eng-land
had found rootage in a new continent.
To the boys and girls of North Carolina every incident in the great sailor's
attempt, unsuccessful though it was, to found a permanent English colony
on North Carolina soil has in it the blended challenge of old world and new
world romance. Amadas and Barlowe, Manteo and Wanchese, Governor Lane
and John White, Virgina Dare and the White Pawn, the fateful word C r o a-t
a n , these names and the stories that enshrine them are a part of the
fireside lore of the State whose capital is Raleigh. On the monument to
Virginia Dare erected on Roanoke Island, in Dare County, under the auspices
of the State Literary and Historical Association, one may read the following
inscription:
On this site in July-August 1585 (O.S.) Colonists sent out from Eng-land
by Sir Walter Raleigh, built a Fort, called by them the New Fort
in Virginia. These Colonists were the first settlers of the English race
in America. They returned to England in July, 1586, with Sir Francis
Drake. Near this place was born on the 18th of August, 1587, "Virginia
Dare" the first child of English speaking parents, born in America, of
Ananias Dare and Eleanor White, his wife, members of another band of
Colonists sent out by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1587. On Sunday, August
20, 1587, "Virginia Dare" was baptized. Manteo, the friendly Chief of
Hatteras Indians, had been baptized on the Sunday preceding. These
baptisms are the first known celebrations of Christian Sacrament in the
territory of the Thirteen Original United States.
I
Tercentenary of Sir Walter Raleigh 27
But in the light of events now happening memorials like these assume a
new significance. They remind us not only of a common origin, but of a
common destiny; they point forward as well as backward; they speak not
of a tale that was old, but of a tale yet to be told. The mighty events that
are today remaking the history of the world have to their credit no finer
achievement than the instinctive rallying of England's far-flung colonies to
the defense of the island mother. Side by side with these colonies, barken-ing
to the same memories, inspired by the same faith, sustained by the same
vision, America has taken her stand. England was yesterday the land of
our fathers; she is today the land of our brothers.
The State Literary and Historical Association will devote its approaching
session to the Commemoration of the Tercentenary of Sir Walter Raleigh but,
as typifying the new movement, the meeting will be a Conference on Anglo-
American Relations. The spirit of that meeting and the spirit in which we
shall continue to honor the memory of Sir Walter Raleigh finds its truest
expression in the lines of one of your own poets:
We severed have been too long.
But now we are done with a worn-out tale
—
The tale of an ancient wrong
—
And our friendship shall last long as love doth last
And be stronger than death is strong.
James Speunt.
C. Alphonso Smith.
Jos. Blount Cheshire.
George Rountree.
The following messages were exchanged by cable:
London, October 28, 1918.
Historical Association,
Raleigh, N. C.
Proud of our common heritage in Raleigh, we send paternal greetings.
Raleigh Tercentenary Committee.
Raleigh, N. C, October 29, 1918.
Raleigh Tercentenary Committee,
London, England.
Greetings:—May Raleigh's memory be a perpetual bond between America
and her glorious Mother Country.
North Carolina Literary and Historical Association.
Exeter, October 28, 1918.
State Historical Association,
Raleigh, N. C.
Devonshire sends greetings on occasion of Raleigh Tercentenary.
Earl Fortescue, Lord Lieutenant.
28 ^ORTH Carolina Historical Association
Raleigh, N. C, October 29, 1918.
Eabl Fortesgue,
Exeter, England.
North Carolina, the scene of Raleigh's colonies, greets his native Devon-shire.
May his memory be a bond of union between America and her Mother
Country. North Carolina Literary and Historical Association.
For the reason already stated the Conference was not held, but
that the benefits which were expected to result from it might not be
wholly lost, the authorities of the Association determined to publish
the papers which were to have been read at the session. To the writers
who very kindly consented to this disposition of their addresses, the
Association returns its sincere thanks. The Association also acknowl-edges
with appreciation the kindness of Prof. W. F. C. Hersey in
permitting the use of the photographs which illustrate this volume.
R. D. W. Connor,
Secretary.
A CELL IN THE BLOODY TOWER WHERE RALEGH WAS CONFINED
THIRTEEN YEARS
From a drawing by J. Wykeham Archer, 1851
SITE OF BURIAL PLACE OF SIR WALTER RALEGH
South side of Altar, St. Margaret's Church, Westminster
ANGLO-AMERICAN RELATIONS
Introductory
By James Sprunt
President of The State Literary and Historical Association
It has been truly said that among the great gifts that God has given
to men is the gift of men ; and it has also been said that it sometimes
falls to the lot of an inexperienced chairman to have to introduce dis-tinguished
speakers of wide reputation. If his modesty is in keeping, as
it should be, with his lack of experience, he will share with his audience
a vivid sense of his own superfluousness. Such an embarrassment is
mine, because I have been invited to introduce to you during this session
men eminent in their respective spheres of usefulness, who will speak
to you on this occasion of the Tercentenary Commemoration of one whose
honored name is perpetuated by that of our Capital City, "who was
wholly gentleman, wholly soldier, who," said Mr. Davis, "falKng under
the displeasure of a scoundrel king, and languishing for twelve long
years under sentence of ignominious death, sent forth through his
prison bars such melodious notes that the very king's son cried out,
'No monarch in Christendom but my father, would keep such a bird in a
cage' ; who, inexhaustible in ideas and in exploits, after having brought
a new world to light, wrote the history of the old in a prison, and then
died because God had made him too great for his fellows—that name,
which to I^orth Carolina ears rings down through the ages like a glorious
chime of bells—the name of our great Sir Walter Raleigh."
Ralegh^ and British Imperialism
By Edwin Greenlaw,
Kenan Professor of English in the University of North Carolina
Ralegli is thouglit of as an adventurer and colonizer wlio typifies
the romance and daring of tlie Elizabethan age. This view is correct
enough, hut it is incomplete. The picturesque aspects of Ralegh's life
half conceal its real meaning.
In one of the most charming of his poems, Colin Clout's Come Home
Again, Edmund Spenser tells how he was induced by a friend whom
he met in his Irish exile to go with him to meet Cynthia, the great
Queen. Under the fanciful disguise of the pastoral conventions we see
how fully the poet entered into sympathy with the ambitions of the
man to whom he gave the happy title of the Shepherd of the Ocean.
It was in the late 80's; Spenser had been in Ireland almost ten years,
an exile because of his imprudence in defense of Leicester's opposition
to the Queen's marriage. He had himself had visions of usefulness in
matters of state, had desired to live the adventurous life of Sidney or
Ralegh, but his adventures were those of the imagination, woven into
the vision of the Faerie Queen. Three books of the great poem had been
completed when Ralegh, fresh from his Virginia enterprise and one of
the heroes of the defeat of the Spanish Armada, the very personifica-tion
of the virtues that Spenser sought to embody in his epic, settled
for a brief time on a neighboring estate. Ralegh himself was engaged
on an ambitious poem, of which only a fragment remains under the
title of "The Twenty-First and Last Book of the Ocean, to Cynthia."
The friends talked over their poems and their ambitions, and at
Ralegh's suggestion Spenser accompanied him to London to lay the
first books of his fairy epic at the feet of the Queen. It was a little
later, when Spenser had returned alone to Ireland and Ralegh was
vainly trying to get a chance to carry on active war against the Spanish
sea power, that the account was written of what had passed between
them in their talks on the long summer days in 1589. Spenser tells how
^Stebbing records 74 different forms known to have been used in spelling Sir Walter
Raleigh's name. "The spelling of his name for the first thirty-two years of his life was as
vague and unsettled as his acts. . . . Ralegh himself had not kept the same spelling
throughout his life. Down to 1583 his more usual signature had been the phonetic Rauley.
But in 1578 he signed as Rawleyghe a deed which his father signed as Ralegh, and his
brother Carew as Rawlygh. A letter of March 17, 1583, is the first he is known to have
signed as Ralegh ; and in the following April and May he reverted to the signature Rauley.
From June 9, 1584, he used till his death no other signature than Ralegh. It appears in
liis books when the name is mentioned. It is used in a pedigree drawn up for him in
1601. Of the hund^-ed and sixty-nine letters collected by Mr. Edward Edwards, a hundred
and thirty-five are thus signed. Six signed Rauley, one Raleghe, and one Rauleigh, belong
to an earlier date. The rest are either unsigned or initialled. The reason of his adop-tion
of the spelling Ralegh from 1584, unless that it was his dead father's, is unknown. Of
the fact there is no doubt. The spelling Raleigh, which posterity has preferred, happens
to be one he is not known to have ever employed."—Stebbing: Sir Walter Ralegh, pp. 30-31. —R. D. W. Connor.
FACSIMILE OF AUTOGRAPH IN LETTER TO MR. R. DUKE, DESIRING TO PUR-CHASE
HAYES BARTON, July 26, 1584
Tercentenary of Sir Walter Raleigh 31
they came to the sea and passed its terrors, and how his friend explained
that its high surges were the hills that belonged to Cynthia,
For land and sea my Cynthia does deserve
To have in her commandement at hand.
In this realm the Shepherd of the Ocean found his life work,
—
And I among the rest, of many least
Have in the Ocean charge to me assigned;
Where I will live or die at her beheast,
And serve and honour her with faithful mind.
And in the fragment of the book of Cynthia, written probably in 1593,
after he had seen Sir Richard Grenville given the place he had coveted
for himself, a command in the fleet that was to attack Spain once more
in the Azores, and after he had been called back by the Queen from
the expedition that he had planned for an attack on Panama, Ralegh
wrote, loyal though disappointed,
—
To seek new worlds for gold, for praise, for glory,
To try desire, to try love severed far.
When I was gone, she sent her memory,
More strong than were ten thousand ships of war;
To call me back, to leave great honour's thought,
To leave my friends, my fortune, my attempt;
To leave the purpose I so long had sought,
And leave both cares and comforts in contempt.
This sense of a destiny connected with the sea is apparent, therefore,
in Spenser's account of the Shepherd of the Ocean and in Ralegh's own
writings. But the key to the understanding of this destiny we find only
by taking into account Ralegh's later writings. The governing prin-ciple
of his life was his belief that England must master Spain and
that this mastery was to be won only through mastery of the sea. His
attempt to colonize Virginia is the first illustration of the working out
of this theory; England was to establish a colonial empire that was to
rival that of Spain. Ralegh's participation in the active warfare be-tween
Spain and England in 1588 and the years following, was the
next step. After 1595 his interest was divided between the ambition
to drive Spain out of South America and the ambition to bring about
the building of a great navy and a great merchant marine. When he
was free, he acted; when he was held in leash by the crochets of the
Queen and when later he was spending his best years in prison, he wrote
vigorously and well in defence of his ideas. The treatment he received
from Elizabeth was similar to that which Sidney had received; his
efforts were fruitless because of her vacillation and her distrust of the
whole progressive and imperialist school to which he belonged. The
32 !N'oRTH Carolina Historical Association
treatment lie received from James was wliat might be expected from
the narrow-minded and provincial pedant king ; at last lie was treacher-ously
sacrificed to satisfy the demands of the powerful enemy that he
had fought with sword and pen and personal influence throughout his
life.
I
Ralegh's attitude toward Spain is set forth in many places. His
contempt for Spanish boasts concerning the invincible Armada and
his conviction of the superior seamanship of the English are illustrated
in the opening paragraphs of his account of the Revenge. He had been
one of the members of the War Council appointed to make prepara-tions
against the threatened invasion/ was a careful student of the
strategy by which the English fleet won the victory, and was a staunch
defender of the thesis that England's safety depended on the main-tenance
of a powerful navy. In his tract opposing the projected mar-riage
of Prince Henry to a princess of Savoy he pointed out that if
Elizabeth had listened to her men of war she would have proceeded
with the war after 1588 until Spain had been utterly destroyed.^ In
the same tract he argued for an alliance between England and France
as a means for curbing Spain.^ Another tract advises alliance with
the I^Tetherlands, because of their great increase in sea power, in order
to remove the renewed danger from Spain.^ Similar tracts are
found among the voluminous works he wrote in captivity, such as "A
Discourse How War May Be Made Against Spain and the Indies."^ In
addition to alliances with France and the ISTetherlands, he held it
necessary to build a fleet powerful enough to conquer the Spanish
colonies in the new world. In ^^A Discourse Touching a War with
Spain," he says
:
But if now the king of Spain can obtain peace upon any condition reason-able,
so as he may fortify his weakness, both in Europe and the Indies, and
gather again sufficient riches, putting the English from the exercise of war
in those parts, and make us to forget his Indies, till those be consumed that
know them, he will soon grow to his former greatness and pride; and then,
if your majesty shall leave the Low Countries, and he find us by ourselves,
it will not be long ere he remembers his old practices and attempts.
6
The importance of the whole question in relation to the future of
England he compresses into a single sentence : "The dispute is no less
than of the government of the whole world." ^
'^Life, Oldvs, Oxford Edition, p. 92.
^Works, Oxford PMition, VIII, 246.
^Works, VIII, 251-252.
*Works, VIIT, 299 pp.
^Works, VIII, 308.
^Works, VIII, 309.
''Works, VIII, 316.
Tercentenary of Sir Walter Raleigh 33
This position Ralegli developed in a series of tracts remarkable for
their clear vision, the fullness of information which they display, and
the constancy with Avhich he held to a definite thesis. The various
tracts dwell on three closely related points : the necessity for England
to seize and maintain the control of the seas ; the means by which this
control is to be secured, through naval strategy, through a great mer-chant
marine, and through alliance with other sea powers against
Spain; and, finally, a colonial empire in America. Ralegh's perception
of these problems and the persistence with which he set forth his views
in the face of opposition so bitter as to make all his efforts nugatory
and eventually to bring him to ruin, prove him to have been a man
far in advance of his time.
On the first point, the duty of England to become a great sea power,
the material in Ralegh's writings is so great that anything like a full
presentation of it is impossible within the limits of a brief article. It
is his constant theme. He saw in Spain an enemy not only to the
religious faith of England but also to that which England must have
if she were to be anything but a dependent island kingdom. Spanish
boastfulness ; the treachery of Spanish propaganda, even among officers
and men on English ships of war; Spanish hypocrisy, which covered
all that they plotted with the ^Vayle of pietie" ; and Spanish ambition
to rule the world, a tyranny directed especially against the freedom of
England,—all find expression. The case against the gigantic menace of
Spain was never better put than by Ralegh, at the ernd of his account
of the fight of the Revenge:
But sure I am that there is no kingdom or commonwealth in all Europe
but if it bee reformed, they then invade it for religion sake; if it be as they
terme Catholike, they pretende title, as if the Kinges of Castile were the
naturall heires of all the worlde: and so betweene both, no kingdom is un-sought.
Where they dare not with their owne forces to invade, they basely
entertaine the traitors and vacabondes of all nations; seeking by those and
by their runnagate Jesuits to win partes, and have by that meane ruined
many noble houses and others in this land, and have extinguished both their
lives and families. What good, honour, or fortune ever man yet by them
achieved, is yet unheard of, or unwritten. And if our English Papistes do
but looke into Portugall, against whom they have no pretence of religion,
how the Nobilitie are put to death, imprisoned, their rich men made a pray,
and all sorts of people captived, they shall find that the obedience even of
the Turke is easie and a libertie, in respect of the slaverie and tyrannie of
Spaine. What they have done in Sicill, in Naples, Millayne, and in the low
countries; who hath there beene spared for religion at all? And it commeth
to my remembrance of a certaine Burger of Antwerpe, whose house being
entered by a companie of Spanish souldiers, when they first sacked the Citie,
hee besought them to spare him and his goodes, being a good Catholike, and
3
34 North Carolina Historical Association
one of their own partie and faction. The Spaniardes answered, that they
knew him to be of a good conscience for him selfe, but his money, plate,
jewels, and goodes were all hereticall, and therefore good prize. So they
abused and tormented the foolish Flamming, who hoped that an Agnus Dei
had beene a sufficient Target against all force of that holie and charitable
nation. Neither have they at any time as they protest invaded the king-domes
of the Indies and Peru, and els where, but onely led thereunto, rather,
to reduce the people to Christianitie, then for either golde or emperie. When
as in one onely Hand called Hispaniola, they have wasted thirtie hundred
thousand of the naturall people, besides manie millions els in other places
of the Indies: a poore and harmeless people created of God, and might have
beene won to his knowledge, as many of them were, and almost as manie as
ever were perswaded thereunto. The Storie whereof is at large written by
a Bishop of their owne nation called Bartholme de las Casas, and translated
into English and manie other languages, intituled The Spanish cruelties.
Who would therefore repose trust in such a nation of ravinous straungers,
and especially in those Spaniardes which more greedily thirst after English
bloud, then after the lives of anie other people of Europe; for the manie
overthrowes and dishonours they have received at our handes, whose weak-nesse
we have discovered to the world, and whose forces at home, abroad, in
Europe, in India, by sea and land, we have even with handfulles of men
and shippes, overthrowne and dishonoured. Let not therefore anie English
man of what religion soever, have other opinion of the Spaniards, but that
those whom hee seeketh to winne of our nation, hee exteemeth base and
traitorous, unworthie persons, or unconstant fooles: and that he useth his
pretence of religion for no other purpose but to bewitch us from the obedience
of our naturall prince, thereby hoping in time to bring us to slaverie and
subjection, and then none shall be unto them so odious, and disdained as
the traitours themselves, who have soldo their countrie to a straunger,
and forsaken their faith and obedience contrarie to nature or religion; and
contrarie to that humane and generall honour, not onely of Christians, but
of heathen and irreligious nations, who have alwaies sustained what labour
soever, and embraced even death it selfe, for their countrie, prince or com-mon-
wealth.8
Viewing the menace of Spain as lie did, Ealegli was able to point
out precisely the manner in which the safety of England was to be
assured. In a passage on naval transport, in the History of the World,
he wrote:
And to say the truth, it is impossible for any maritime Countrie, not hav-ing
the coasts admirably fortified, to defend it selfe against a powerful!
enemie, that is master of the Sea.9
This proposition he puts more positively a moment later, by saying:
But making the question generall and positive, Whether England, without
helpe of her fleet, be able to debarre an enemie from landing, I hold that it
is unable so to doe, and therefore I thinke it most dangerous to make the
^Sir Walter Raleigh: Selections from his Writings, ed. Hadow, pp. 161-163.
^Selections, ed. Hadow, p. 104.
Tercentenary of Sir Walter Raleigh 35
adventure. For the incoiiragement of a first victorie to an enemy, and the
discouragement of being beaten to the invaded, may draw after it a most
perilous consequence.io
This position lie defends by a long series of illustrations, part of
tliem consisting of a detailed examination of what would pretty surely
happen were a hostile army to be permitted to land on English soil,
and part of them drawn from his own experiences at Fayal in 1597.
The whole argument he concludes with the words:
For end of this digression, I hope this question shall never come to triall;
his Majesties many moveable Forts will forbid the experience. And although
the English will no lesse disdaine than any Nation under heaven can doe, to
be beaten upon their owne ground or elsewhere by a forraigne enemie; yet
to entertaine those that shall assaile us, with their owne beefe in their bellies
and before they eate of our Kentish Capons, I take it to be the wisest way.
To doe which, his Majestie, after God, will imploy his good ships on the Sea,
and not trust to any intrenchment upon the shore.
n
Finally, it should be pointed out that Ralegh saw clearly that the
menace of Spain consisted in large part in the treasure which was
supplied by South America, gold which was not only the sinews of war
for England's enemy but also a means of corruption everywhere. To
conquer Spain, therefore, meant not only the necessity of possessing
a superior war fleet but also the use of this fleet to cut off Spain's
source of supplies. The idea is expressed repeatedly in his writings
:
perhaps it is phrased most eloquently in the preface to his Discovery
of Gruiana, where, after pointing out that the great enterprise is likely
to fail through English indifference, he says:
If the Spanish nation had been of like belief to these detractors, we would
little have feared or doubted their attempts, wherewith we are now daily
threatened: but if we now consider of the actions both of Charles the Fifth,
who had the maidenhead of Peru, and the abundant treasures of Atabalipa,
together with the affairs of the Spanish king now living, what territories he
hath purchased, what he hath added to the acts of his predecessors, how
many kingdoms he hath endangered, how many armies, garrisons, and navies
he hath and doth maintain; the great losses which he hath repaired, as in
88 above one hundred sail of great ships, with their artillery, and that no
year is less unfortunate but that many vessels, treasures, and people are
devoured; and yet, notwithstanding, he beginneth again, like a storm, to
threaten shipwreck to us all; we shall find that these abilities rise not from
the trades of sack and Seville oranges, nor from ought else that either Spain,
Portugal, or any of his other provinces produce: it is his Indian gold that en-dangereth
and disturbeth all the nations of Europe; it purchaseth intelligence,
creepeth into councils, and setteth bound loyalty at liberty in the greatest
monarchies of Europe. If the Spanish king can keep us from foreign enter-
^'^S elections, ed. Hadow, p. 106.
^Selections, ed. Hadow, p. 113.
36 J^ORTH Carolina Historical Association
prises, and from the impeachment of his trades, either by offer of invasion
or by besieging us in Britain, Ireland, or elsewhere, he hath then brought the
work of our peril in great forwardness. ... I have therefore laboured
all my life, both according to my small power and persuasion, to advance all
those attempts that might either promise return of profit to ourselves, or at
least be a let and impeachment to the quiet course and plentiful trades of
the Spanish Nation.12
To destroy the menace of Spain Ralegli proposed to employ three
agencies, all of them connected with sea-power. The first of these was
the development of the naval strategy that had proved successful in
'88. Against the Spanish theory of large ships heavily manned with
soldiers who were to board and fight hand to hand, Ralegh proposed to
use light ships, fast and easily maneuvered, manned by comparatively
few men, and made formidable through ordnance. By extensive em-ployment
of ordnance, he says, "we might have commanded the seas,
and thereby the trade of the world itself." ^^ British prowess and naval
strategy, he tells King James, were once of a quality that forced
England's enemies not to "dispute de mari libero" but to acknowledge
"the English to be domini maris Britannici/'^'^ It seemed to him,
therefore, "exceedingly lamentable that for any respect in the world,
seeing the preservation of the state and monarchy doth surmount all
other respects, that strangers \_sc. the Hollanders, whose maritime trade
threatened to drive both Britain and Spain from the seas] should be
permitted to eat us out, by exporting and importing both our own
commodities and those of foreign nations: for it is no wonder we are
overtopped in all the trade we have abroad and far off, seeing we have
the grass cut from under our feet in our fields and pastures."!^
To recover this prestige Ralegh advised, over and over again, that
ships of the line be supplemented by the construction of a large number
of hoys, small ships armed with ordnance, through which the mightiest
armadas could be conquered.^^ He prepared for Prince Henry an
essay on the navy and sea-service that showed the most intimate
knowledge of ship-building, naval strategy, and personnel. i''' The fame
of past victories will not protect Britain ; the need for perfect prepara-tion
for a contest certain to come sooner or later is sufficient argument
against those who neglect the development of Britain's sea-power.^^
"Peace," he says, "is a great blessing of God, and blessed are the peace-makers;
and therefore, doubtless, blessed are those means whereby
"TForfcs, VIII, 388-389.
*^"A Discourse of the Invention of Ships," Works, VIII, 331.
^Hbid., 327.
^ibid., 334.
^Hbid., 328-329; Observations Concerning the Royal Navy and Sea Service," Works, VIII,
337 ff. ; "Of the Art of War at Sea," from the History of the World, Hadow, 100-102.
"Works. VTTI, 335 ff.
^Hbid., 348-349.
Tercentenary of Sir Walter Raleigh 37
peace is gained and maintained.!*^ Thus Ralegli wrote of naval strategy,
"a subject, to my knowledge, never handled by any man, ancient or
modern."-^ The burden of all his writing was that Britain "can never
be conquered whilst the kings thereof keep the dominion of the
seas."2i
Besides a strong navy, England, in Ralegh's judgment, should capture
the trade of the world through the establishment of a great merchant
marine and through alliance with Holland. His "Observations on
Trade and Commerce" ^^ shows a mastery of the details of the foreign
trade of England and other countries and a skill in the use of these
details that surprise one. He shows that England had neglected both
trade opportunities and the merchant marine that should carry her
commerce, allowing Holland, not a producing nation, to outstrip her
and to rival Spain. Once more, the small ship, manned by a few men,
is recommended. By such means, he says, Holland has captured the
trade of France, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Turkey, and the East and West
Indies. 2^ Some towns have nearly a thousand sail of ships. They fish
in British waters and their trade in herring alone runs into millions of
pounds annually, while the English have none. They have near six hun-dred
ships for the lumber trade ; three thousand ships for trade with the
East; two thousand for France, Spain, Portugal, and Italy, while the
English have no ships in that trade. Between five and six hundred
ships are sent to English ports every year, against forty British ships
in the trade with the Low Countries. Lacking timber for construction,
they nevertheless build a thousand ships a year, "yet our ships and
mariners decline, and traffic and merchants daily decay."^^ On the
basis of such facts as these, Ralegh argues for the building of a great
merchant marine and shows how such a policy will bring rich rewards.
His purpose, he says, is "to allure and encourage the people for their
private gain, to be all workers and erectors of a commonwealth; . . .
to make the land powerful by increasing of ships and marines."^^
The rule of the sea, Ralegh holds in another place, belongs rightfully
to Britain. The United Provinces can not take it away, but must seek
an English alliance, and this alliance means the overthrow of Spain.
The Hollanders have won their freedom,
—
But be their estate what it will, let them not deceive themselves in believing
that they can make themselves masters of the sea, for certainly the shipping
of England, with the great squadron of his majesty's navy royal, are able,
in despite of any prince or state in Europe, to command the great and large
^Hhid., 350.
20From the History of the World, Hadow, 102.
2iTForfcs, VIII, 321.
"TForfcs, VIII, 351 ff.
23Trorfcs, VIII, 358.
'*Works, VIII, 358-366.
^Works, VIII, 375.
38 [N'oKTH Carolina Historical Association
field of the ocean. But ... I shall never think him a lover of this land
or of the king, that shall persuade his majesty from embracing the amity of
the United Provinces, for his majesty is no less safe by them than they
invincible by him.26
The sum of his advice is that Britain should keep on good terms with
France and seek open alliance with The Netherlands. Only so may
the hatred of Spain be kept in check, "a hatred more than immortal,
if more can be to our nation and state."^''' "There are only two ways,"
he says, "by which England may be afflicted : the one by invasion, being
put to the defensive, in which we shall but cast lots for our own gar-ments;
the other by impeachment of our trades, by which trades all
commonwealths flourish and are enriched. Invaded or impeached we
cannot be but by sea, and therefore that enemy which is strongest by
shipping is most to be suspected and feared."^^
To make no terms with Spain, knowing that the issue between the
two nations was for nothing less than the sovereignty of the world;
to insure predominance through sea-power, through a great merchant
marine, and through alliance,—these are the principles of foreign
policy that Ralegh insisted on at all times. No matter how remote the
subject of his tract, no matter if he is writing a history of the ancient
world, always he returns to his theme. To Spain he was sacrificed at
length, and his prophecies came true. "For King James," says Oldys,
—
For King James, soon after Ralegh's execution, beginning to see how he
was and would be deluded by the Spaniard, made one of his ministers write
to his agent in Spain, to let that state know they should be looked upon as
the most unworthy people in the world, if they did not now act with sincerity,
since his majesty had given so many testimonies of his; and now of late,
'by causing Sir Walter Ralegh to be put to death, chiefly for the giving them
satisfaction. Further, to let them see how, in many actions of late, his
majesty had strained upon the affections of his people, and especially in this
last concerning Sir Walter Ralegh, who died with a great deal of courage
and constancy. Lastly, that he should let them know how able a man Sir
Walter Ralegh was, to have done his majesty service. Yet, to give them
content, he hath not spared him; when by preserving him, he might have
given great satisfaction to his subjects, and had at command, upon all
occasions, as useful a man as served any prince in Christendom.29
II
The capstone to Ralegh's imperial policy is found in his theory of
colonization. As Hakluyt observed, the original plan was to establish
in Virginia and North Carolina a colonial empire to rival Spain. The
^"A Discourse of the Invention of Ships," Works, VIII, 332. See also "A Discourse
Touching a War with Spain," VIII, 299 ff.
^''Works, VIII, 252.
^Works, VIIT, 302.
^Life, Oxford Edition, I. 568.
Tekcentenary of Sir Walter Raleigh 39
need of money was great, and the beginning difficult, but in time
English commerce would reap untold benefits and the enterprise would
"prove far more beneficial in divers respects to this our realm than the
world, yea many of the wiser sort, have hitherto imagined."'^ ^ But
before this new colony had been firmly established the war with Spain
was on. Ralegh became a member of the national council of war and
threw his whole influence into the work of seeing that the Armada
should be met by a sea-power able to destroy it before the army which
it carried could be landed on British soil. The effect of his pre-occupation
with the direct danger from Spain, which continued in one
way or another for several years, was to divert his attention from
colonization in North Carolina. When he returned to the project of
a colonial empire to rival Spain, it was with the idea that England's
enemy should be supplanted in the very field that he had pre-empted
and from which he had drawn such vast stores.
The issue is clearly drawn in the Preface to the Discovery of Guiana.
Spanish gold, he thinks, drawn from America, is the source of England's
greatest danger. Through colonization Britain can equal or surpass
Spain in revenue, may pass from a state that is always on the defensive
to the primacy of the world. That Ralegh intended to establish an em-pire,
not merely to capture booty, is proved by his method. He did not
need, he says, to suffer such hardships or to bring himseK to poverty.
He gave the natives property of greater value than the gold he received.
He treated them so kindly, and spoke of his Queen so eloquently, that
he drew their hearts to him. His instructions to his men,—to use all
courtesy in dealing with the natives, to offer no violence to women, to
cooperate for the success of their enterprise, show that he was no Tam-burlaine,
bent on ruthless conquest. They begged him to protect them
against the cruel and blood-thirsty Spaniards. They pledged themselves
to serve him and his Queen, whenever he should return to establish
her dominion. They told him how to counteract the deadly poisons used
on their arrows. Even Berreo, the Spanish governor, Ralegh's prisoner,
became his friend and gave him valuable information. And Ralegh's
intrepidity, his eagerness to do what Berreo said was impossible, proved
the courage of the man and his complete absorption in his great adven-ture.
"I would rather have lost the sack of one or two towns," he says
in explanation of his failure to bring back the treasure that was the
real hope of the Queen, "than to have defaced or endangered the future
hope of so many millions, and the great, good, and rich trade which
England may be possessed of thereby. I am assured now that they
will all die, even to the last man, against the Spaniards, in hope of
s^Dedication to Ralegh, quoted by Oldys, I. 88-89.
40 ' JN'oETH Carolina Historical Association
our succour and return: whereas otherwise, if I had either laid hands
on the borderers, or ransomed the lords as Berreo did, or invaded the
subjects of Inga, I knew all had been lost for hereafter."^ i He planned
to send English colonizers to Guiana.^^ And these colonists, the gov-ernors
of the new realm, should civilize the natives by showing them
how to build up cities and become more prosperous than in their un-ordered
life before the English came
:
That the only way to civilize and reform the savage and barbarous lives
and corrupt manners of such people is,
1. To be dealt withal by gentle and loving conversation among them; to
attain to the knowledge of their language, and of the multitude of the special
discommodities and inconveniences in their manner of living.
2. The next is to get an admired reputation amongst them, upon a solid
and true foundation of piety, justice, and wisdom, conjoined with fortitude
and power.
3. The third is, discreetly to possess them with a knowledge of the condi-tion
of their own estate. Thus Orpheus and Amphion were said to draw after
them the beasts of the field, etc. And this must be first wrought by a visible
representation of the certainty, truth, and sincerity of these, together with
the felicity of a reformed estate. All which is but to give foundation, bottom,
and firm footing unto action, and to prepare them to receive wholesome and
good advice, for the future profit and felicity of themselves and their pos-terity.
For the more commodious effecting of this reformation in a rude
and barbarous people, they are to be persuaded to withdraw and unite them-selves
into several colonies; that by it an interchangeable communication and
commerce of all things may more commodiously be had, and that they may
so live together in civility, for the better succour and welfare of one another:
and thereby they may more easily be instructed in the Christian faith, and
governed under the magistrates and ministers of the king, or other superior
power, under whom this reformation is sought.33
It is evident, therefore, that Ralegh's true claim to greatness con-sists
in the fact that he was the first Englishman to sense clearly the
path which Britain was to take. He pointed out the way to the domina-tion
of the sea that made imperial Britain possible. This was the first
pillar in the arch wherethrough gleamed that enchanted world which
had not even dawned upon the imaginations of the governors of the
realm. The second pillar was his conception of colonization, the con-ception
that has made Great Britain a builder of states, not an ex-ploiter
of subject races. The difference between Spanish methods and
Ralegh's methods is the difference between German colonies and the
^Wucovery of Guiana, Works, VIII, 451.
""The Oroonoko itself had long ere this had five thousand English in it, I assure myself,
had not my employment at Calez, the next year after my return from Guiana, and after that
our journey to the islands, hindered me for two years [i. e., after the first voyage 1, after
which Tiron's rebellion made her majesty unwilling that any great number of ships or men
should be taken out of England." Letter to Carew, shortly before his execution. Works,
VIII, 503.
•^The Magnificency and Opulency of Cities," WorTcs, VIII. 541-542.
Tercentenary of Sir Walter Raleigh 41
colonies of Great Britain. Tlie advantage to Britain and to native
races was to be mutual. In all tliat Ralegh liad to say on the subject,
and, what gives greater weight than mere academic theory, in all that he
did, under insuperable difficulties, to give to the creature of his vision
flesh and blood, there lies implicit the philosophy that has made the
British empire a League of Free Nations, the model for a world. Be-side
this accomplishment the record of Philip Sidney is pale and in-effectual.
For Sidney Avas fortunate in his life, and in his death he has
been the inheritor of unfulfilled renown. But Ralegh, forced to spend
his best years in prison, constantly subject to jealousy and distrust, his
first colonial plan destroyed by the conflict with Spain and his second
destroyed by those who plotted his ruin because they thought that he
stood in the way of their advancement, was yet of such indomitable
purpose in his old age, weakened by imprisonment and impoverished
by his enemies, as to sally forth like Tennyson's Ulysses, doubting not,
to use his own splendid phrase about his earlier expedition, ^'but for
one year more to hold fast my soul in my teeth," only to be sacrificed
to the enemy that he had fought all his life. Here are elements of great-ness
that are of the very texture of the fabric of Britain's power.
42 iN'oETH Carolina Historical AssociATioiir
Sir Walter Ralegh as a Man of Letters i
Hy Pbank Wilson Cheney Hersey
Instructor in English in Harvard University
If Sir Walter Ralegh could be witli us today, lie could greet us witli
a phrase that would catfth the spirit of the moment. Great occasions
beget great phrases, and Ralegh had the superb gift—like many other
renowned men of action—of uttering words which seize the imagination.
The shout of Douglas as he hurled the heart of Bruce in front of him
in his last battle, ^Tass first, great heart, as thou wert ever wont";
the exhortation of Cromwell, "Put your trust in God and keep your
powder dry"—these sayings are living literature which spring full
armed from the eloquence of events. As Ralegh stood on the scaffold,
three hundred years ago today, his gift of speech rose to new heights
of glory. "I thank God that He has sent me to die in the light and
not in darkness"—"I have a long journey to go; therefore must take
my leave." Then, having put off his gown and doublet, he called to the
headsman to show him the axe, which not being suddenly done, he said,
"I prithee, let me see it. Dost thou think that I am afraid of it ?" Hav-ing
fingered the edge of it a little, he returned it and said, smiling, to
the sheriff, "This is a sharp medicine, but it is a sound cure for all
diseases." Being asked which way he would lay himself on the block,
he answered, "So the heart be right, it is no matter which way the
head lies." Few men in the last scene of their lives which had been
played on a theatre so extensive and majestic, could find such speeches
as the curtain came down. And if Ralegh were standing here, seeing
the fruits of his prophecy about America, "I shall yet live to see it an
English nation," realizing the new ties that encircle all English-speak-ing
peoples, and rejoicing in the approaching victory over black crime,
his tongue would ennoble the day with a splendid utterance.
Strange that this great Englishman—the greatest Englishman of his
time, except Shakespeare—this soldier, sailor, explorer, colonizer,
should find a place in histories of literature as a man of letters. And
yet not strange, because literature with him was a part of his life
—
what literature ought to be. What he wrote, he wrote because he had
to express his feelings or ideas, his hatred of the arch-enemy, Spain, his
exuberant joy in adventure, his love of a good fight. With such a man
words are acts. "It is easy to find words when one mounts to the assault,"
Rostrand says in Cyrano de Bergerac. Throughout the poems and songs,
^The poems and narratives mentioned in this address, as well as extracts from the Trial
and the Dying Speech on the scaffold, are to be found in the author's Sir Walter Ralegh:
The Shepherd of The Ocean, New York, Macmillan, 1916.
THE BIRTHPLACE OF SIR WALTER RALEGH
Hayes Barton, near Budleigh-Salterton, Devon
RITER FRONT OF DURHAM HOUSE, RALEGH'S LONDON RESIDENCE, 1584-1603
His Study Was in the Little Turret
From a Drawing by Hollar in the Pepysian Library, Cambridge
Tercentenary of Sir Walter Raleigh 43
the narratives of sea-fights, the record of tropical adventure, and later
in the History of the World, Ralegh's telling phrases sprang rapidly to
his lips. Take his Epitaph on Sir Philip Sidney, who died fighting in
Flanders. He expresses his country's grief, but also her pride, in lan-guage
which may be today the elegy of so many who have died for liberty
in Flanders. (I quote a few stanzas only.)
"Whence to sharp wars sweet honour did thee call,
Thy country's love, religion, and thy friends;
Of worthy men the marks, the lives, and ends,
And her defence, for whom we labour all.
Back to the camp by thee that day was brought,
First thine own death; and after, thy ijong fame;
Tears to the soldiers; the proud Castilian's shame;
Virtue expressed, and honour truly taught.
What hath he lost that such great grace hath won?
Young years for endless years, and hope unsure
Of fortune's gifts for wealth that still shall dure:
O happy race, with so great praises run!
England doth hold thy limbs, that bred the same;
Flanders thy valour, where it last was tried;
The camp thy sorrow, where thy body died;
Thy friends thy want; the world thy virtue's fame.
That day their Hannibal died, our Scipio fell,
—
Scipio, Cicero, and Petrarch of our time;
Whose virtues, wounded by my worthless rhyme,
Let angels speak, and heaven thy praises tell."
Remember these lines wherein speaks heart of oak
:
"England doth hold thy limbs, that bred the same;
Flanders thy valour, where it last was tried."
Again, take the Verses found in his Bible in the Gate-house at West-minster,
written out in full the night before his death (including six
lines composed earlier in his life, but now traced again with what
pathos we can imagine, and completed with a new couplet) :
"Even such is time, that takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with earth and dust;
Who, in the dark and silent grave.
When we have wandered all our ways.
Shuts up the story of our days;
But from this earth, this grave, this dust,
My God shall raise me up, I trust!"
44 ISToKTH Carolina Historical Association
"O Cruel Time" lie liad begun, years before, ^ow be voices the
final, dispassionate judgment, "Even sucb is time." Witb wbat sim-plicity,
and yet witb wbat stately music, tbe poem proceeds. Tbe new
lines at tbe end tbrow a balo of religious feeling over tbe entire piece.
Kalegb's poetry differs from tbat of bis fellow Elizabetban courtiers.
It is not "literary"; it is not filled witb tbe elaborate filigree of tbe
conceits of tbe time ; it does not savor of tbe closet and tbe tiring-room.
Tbe tbree adjectives applied to bis poetry by bis contemporary Putten-bam
in tbe Arte of English Poesie ten generations of critics bave not
improved upon: "For dittie and amorous ode, I find Sir Walter
Ralegb's vein most lofty, insolent, and passionate." And tbese qualities
arise from Ralegb's own pride and impatient nature.
Tbere is notbing tbat we sbould call sweetness of soul bere; tbere is
no tender sympatby for tbe patbos of life; again, tbere is no sense of
illusion or of mystery, no glamour of unreality. Ratber tbere is a bit-terness,
a contempt for sentiment. He cuts life down to tbe bone and
be finds tbe bone—bard. His poetry is tbe dramatic expression of bis
emotion of tbe moment, bis antipatbies, bis cynicism, bis disgust. "If
all tbe world and love were young," be says in tbe reply to Marlowe's
song The Passionate Shepherd to His Love. Perbaps tbat one line
sums up Ralegb's attitude : "If all tbe world and love were young."
Wbat a world-old and world-weary cbill ! Marlowe's sbepberd bad sung
:
Come live with me, and be my love;
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and valleys, dales and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountain yields.
And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.
And I will make thee beds of roses,
And a thousand fragrant posies;
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;
A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Fair-lined slippers for the cold.
With buckles of the purest gold;
Tercentenary of Sir Walter Raleigh 45
A belt of straw and ivy-buds,
"With coral clasps and amber-studs:
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me, and be my love.
The shepherd-swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May-morning;
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me, and be my love."
And to this innocent optimism Ralegh replies
:
"If all the world and love were young,
And truth in every shepherd's tongue.
These pretty pleasures might me move
To live with thee and be thy love.
But time drives flocks from field to fold.
When rivers rage and rocks grow cold;
And Philomel becometh dumb;
The rest complains of cares to come.
The flowers do fade, and wanton fields
To wayward winter reckoning yields:
A honey tongue, a heart of gall,
Is fancy's spring, but sorrow's fall.
Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy beds of roses,
Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies.
Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten,
—
In folly ripe, in reason rotten.
Thy belt of straw and ivy-buds.
Thy coral clasps and amber-studs,
—
All those in me no means can move
To come to thee and be thy love.
But could youth last, and love still breed;
Had joys no date, nor age no need;
Then those delights my mind might move
To live with thee and be thy love."
In another poem, As You Came from the Holy Land, he says:
"Know that Love is a careless child,
And forgets promise past;
He is blind, he is deaf when he list,
And in faith never fast.
His desire is a dureless content,
And a trustless joy;
He is won with a world of despair,
And is lost with a toy."
46 ^KToRTH Carolin-a Historical Association
The courtier who has learned from long experience speaks in these lines
:
"Fain would I, but I dare not; I dare, and yet I may not;
I may, although I care not, for pleasure when I play not.
You laugh because you like not; I jest when as I joy not;
You pierce, although you strike not; I strike and yet annoy not."
Ralegh's passionate love of justice, however, his hatred of treachery,
blazed forth at the crises in his life. Early in favor with Elizabeth,
he was often out of favor. When he was committed to the Tower (1592)
by the Queen, who discovered that he was in love with Elizabeth Throg-morton,
one of her maids of honor, he wrote the twenty-first and last
book of his long poem Cynthia. The frenzy of grief which he expresses
at being debarred from the presence of the Queen is the language of ex-aggeration;
but Ralegh, with his desire to be foremost and to exceed
all men, undoubtedly exaggerated for the pure love of dazzling. It was
probably these bitter experiences at court that brought forth The Lie,
a poem which flashes with scorn and anger:
"Go, Soul, the bodj's guest.
Upon a thankless arrant:
Fear net to touch the best;
The truth shall be thy warrant:
Go, since I needs must die.
And give the world the lie.
Say to the court, it glows
And shines like rotten wood;
Say to the church, it shows
What's good, and doth no good:
If church and court reply,
Then give them both the lie.
Tell potentates, they live
Acting by others' action;
Not loved unless they give,
Not strong but by a faction:
If potentates reply.
Give potentates the lie.
Tell zeal it wants devotion;
Tell love it is but lust;
Tell time it is but motion;
Tell flesh it is but dust:
And wish them not reply,
For thou must give the lie.
Tercentenary of Sir Walter Raleigh 47
Tell physic of her boldness;
Tell skill it is pretension,
Tell charity of coldness;
Tell law it is contention:
And as they do reply,
So give them still the lie."
Immediately after the disgraceful perversion of justice called a trial,
by which Ralegh was condemned to death after the accession of James
the First (1603), his spirit flamed forth in The Pilgrimage. Written in
the shadow of death, this poem first voices his hope of salvation, and
then in the second haK flays the treachery of those who had done him
to death. I^othing in Ralegh has more serene beauty than some of the
lines in the first part of this poem. There is a preternatural simplicity,
a Pre-Raphaelite naivete in his picture of the heavenly land.
SIR WALTER RALEGH'S PILGRIMAGE
"Give me my scallop-shell of quiet,
My staff of faith to walk upon,
My scrip of joy, immortal diet.
My bottle of salvation.
My gown of glory, hope's true gage;
And thus I'll take my pilgrimage.
Blood must be my body's balmer;
No other balm will there be given;
Whilst my soul, like quiet palmer,
Travelleth towards the land of heaven;
Over the silver mountains,
Where spring the nectar fountains:
There will I kiss
The bowls of bliss;
And drink mine everlasting fill
Upon every milken hill.
My soul will be a-dry before;
But after, it will thirst no more.
Then by that happy blissful day.
More peaceful pilgrims I shall see,
That have cast off their rags of clay,
And walk apparelled fresh like me.
I'll take them first
To quench their thirst
And taste of nectar suckets.
At those clear wells
Where sweetness dwells.
Drawn up by saints in crystal buckets.
48 !N'oRTH Carolina Histoeical Association
And when our bottles and all we
Are filled with immortality,
Then the blessed paths we'll travel,
Strowed with rubies thick as gravel;
Ceilings of diamonds, sapphire floors.
High walls of coral and pearly bowers.
From thence to heaven's bribeless hall.
Where no corrupted voices brawl; j
No conscience molten into gold,
No forged accuser bought or sold,
No cause deferred, no vain-spent journey,
For there Christ is the king's Attorney,
Who pleads for all without degrees,
And He hath angels, but no fees.
And when the grand twelve-million jury
Of our sins, with direful fury.
Against our souls black verdicts give,
Christ pleads His death, and then we live.
Be Thou my speaker, taintless pleader,
Unblotted lawyer, true proceeder!
Thou givest salvation even for alms;
Not with a bribed lawyer's palms.
And this is mine eternal plea
To Him that made heaven, earth, and sea,
That, since my flesh must die so soon.
And want a head to dine next noon.
Just at the stroke, when my veins start and spread.
Set on my soul an everlasting head!
Then am I ready, like a palmer fit.
To tread those blest paths which before I writ.
Of death and judgment, heaven and hell.
Who oft doth think, must needs die well."
But in hours wlien fortune v^as smiling and Kalegh's heart was not
chilled by baseness and ingratitude and stratagems, he could glow with
warmth and sincere admiration. He could praise, none more majes-tically.
Witness his magnificent sonnet on Spenser's Faerie Queen, the
nobility of whose music won imitation by Milton:
"Methought I saw the grave where Laura lay,
Within that temple where the vestal flame
Was wont to burn: and, passing by that way,
To see that buried dust of living fame,
Whose tomb fair Love and fairer Virtue kept.
All suddenly I saw the Faerie Queen,
At whose approach the soul of Petrarch wept;
And from thenceforth those graces were not seen,
Tercentenary of Sir Walter Raleigh 49
For they this Queen attended ; in whose stead
Oblivion laid him down on Laura's hearse.
Hereat the hardest stones were seen to bleed,
And groans of buried ghosts the heaven did pierce:
Where Homer's spright did tremble all for grief,
And cursed the access of that celestial thief."
Recall, too, the Epitaph on Sidney, and the sonnet to Sir Arthur Gorges,
one of his captains in the voyage to the Azores, which has these lofty
lines
:
"Change not! To change thy fortune 'tis too late:
Who with a manly faith resolves to die,
May promise to himself a lasting state."
As a poet, then, Ralegh is a surprising figure. He would be more
surprising if we had the twenty lost books of his poem Cynthia, which
must have amounted to ten or fifteen thousand lines. This was praised
by Spenser, v/hen the tv/o poets read their poems to each other at Spen-ser's
house in Ireland and wrote admiring sonnets about each other's
epics. It was Raleigh who presented Spenser to the Queen. It was
Spenser who gave Ralegh the title of "the Shepherd of the Ocean,"
which so picturesquely sums up Sir Walter's exploits on the sea. And
the lines in which this title is introduced trail the seaweed after them
:
"The Shepherd of the Ocean by name,
And said he came far from the main-sea deep."
"Far from the main-sea deep" he sailed with untarnished flag. Run-ning
down the trades, coursing the hot Carribean, sweeping the blue
waters of the Azores, breasting Cadiz Harbor, he did all gallantly, com-peting
for posts of danger, and setting his eyes on the bright blazon of
honor. Of his capture of Fayal, he says, "The truth is, that I could
have landed my men with more ease than I did; yea without finding
any resistance, if I would have rowed to another place; yea even there
where I landed, if I would have taken more companie to helpe me.
But, without fearing any imputation of rashnesse, I may say, that I
had more regard of reputation, in that businesse, than of safetie. For
I thought it to belong unto the honor of our Prince and ISTation." And
at Cadiz, "I was resolved to give and not take example for this service;
holding mine own reputation dearest, and remembering my great duty
to her Majesty. With the first peep of day, therefore, I weighed anchor,
and bare with the Spanish fleet, taking the start of all ours a good
distance." A good fight and a fair fight, and a high rivalry in being
first to strike and first to win! How Raleo;h's heart would burst with
50 I^ORTH Carolina Historical Association
rage against tKe barbarous German submarines wbicli liave foully mur-dered
living and beloved sbips with tbeir precious human burden,
and have
"The multitudinous seas incarnadined,
Making the green one redT
And what did the Shepherd of the Ocean write about his sea? Un-fortunately
no songs of^ sailormen, no witching poems caught from the
kiss of foam. (We regret that.) But rather sea-fights and voyages, the
clash of cutlasses, the salvos of cannon ! The most famous of these prose
narratives is A Report of the Truth of the Fight about the Isles of
Agores, this last summer, hetwixt the Revenge, one of her Majestie's
Ships, and an Armada of the King of Spain (1591). It was this account
of the last fight and death of Sir Richard Grenville, Ralegh's cousin,
that inspired Tennyson to write his ballad The Revenge. The story of
the exploration of Guiana appeared in 1596: The Discovery of the
large, rich and beautiful Empire of Guiana, with a Relation of the
great and golden City of Manoa, which the Spaniards call El Dorado.
In the same year he wrote A Relation of Cadiz Action—a report writ-ten
immediately after the defeat of the Spanish fleet in Cadiz Harbor,
where all the English commanders vied with each other in leading the
attack and Ralegh outstripped the rest.
These narratives of Ralegh's are the work of a man of action in
action. They might have been written while on the deck of his ship
with a quill dipped in tar. As he says, he "neither studied phrase,
forme, nor fashion." He did not carve his sentences in alabaster: he
cut them out with his sword. Sometimes hacked them, too. Often the
unity of them disappears; and we have the breathless effect of rapid
talk, afterthoughts quickly added, so eager is he to tell us all the ring-ing
circumstances. As here, in the fight of the Revenge
:
"Unto ours there remained no comfort at all, no hope, no supply either of
ships, men, or weapons; the mastes all beaten over board, all her tackle cut
asunder, her upper works altogither rased, and in effect even shee was
with the water, but the verie foundation or bottom of a ship, nothing being
left over head either for flight or defence. Syr Richard finding himselfe in
this distresse, and unable anie longer to make resistance, having endured
in this fifteene houres fight, the assault of fifteene several Armadoes, all by
tornnes aboorde him, and by estimation eight hundred shot of great artillerie,
besides manie assaults and entries. And that himself and the shippe must
needes be possessed by the enemie, who were now all cast in a ring round
about him; The Revenge not able to move one way or other, but as she was
moved with the waves and billow of the sea: commanded the maister Gunner,
whom he knew to be a most resolute man, to split and sinke the shippe;
Tercentenary of Sir Walter Raleigh 51
that thereby nothing might remaine of glorie or victorie to the Spaniards:
seeing in so manie houres fight, and with so great a Navie they were not
able to take her, having had fifteene houres time, fifteene thousand men, and
fiftie and three saile of men of warre to performe it withall."
It is tlie words themselves that enchant us, the words that ride boldly
on the tossing weaves of his sentences. The phrases glint with the sun.
The tropical splendors of The Discovery of Guiana charm our eyes.
"I never saw a more beautiful country, nor more lively prospects; hills
so raised here and there over the valleys; the river winding into divers
branches; the plains adjoining without bush of stubble, all fair green grass;
the ground of hard sand, easy to march on, either for horse or foot; the
deer crossing in every path; the birds towards the evening singing on every
tree with a thousand several tunes; cranes and herons of white, crimson,
and carnation, perching in the river's side; the air fresh with a gentle
easterly wind; and every stone that we stooped to take up promised either
gold or silver by his complexion."
A voyage full of marvels is this, as any voyage in quest of El Dorado
—
the Gilded King and the Golden City—has every romantic right to be.
These marvels Ralegh sets forth in words which are brushed w^ith gold.
They kindle our imagination as they kindled Shakespeare's.
"Next unto Arui there are two rivers Atoica and Caura, and on that branch
which is called Caura are a nation of people whose heads appear not above
their shoulders; which though it may be thought a mere fable, yet for mine
own part I am resolved it is true, because every child in the provinces of
Aromaia and Canuri affirm the same. They are called Ewaipanoma; they
are reported to have their eyes in their shoulders, and their mouths in the
middle of their breasts, and that a long train of hair groweth backward
between their shoulders."
This picturesque w^onder Shakespeare seized upon when he wrote the
story of Othello's adventures
:
"Wherein of antres vast and deserts idle.
Rough quarries, rocks, and hills whose heads touch heaven,
It was my hint to speak,—such was my process,
—
And of the Cannibals that each other eat.
The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads
Do grow beneath their shoulders." Othello: I, 3.
The Amazons, that warlike race of women, throw their bewitchment
over the pages. A mountain of chrystal and a super-l^iagara amaze us.
Alligators swarm the Orinoco—grotesquely decorative.
"We saw in the river divers sorts of strange fishes, and of marvellous
bigness; but for lagartos, it exceeded, for there were thousands of those
52 ISToETH Carolina Historical Association
ugly serpents; and the people call it, for the abundance of them, the River
of Lagartos, in their language. I had a negro, a very proper young fellow,
who leaping out of the galley to swim in the mouth of this river, was in all
our sights taken and devoured with one of those lagartos."
And always just beyond our reach the Golden City lures us
"Manoa, the imperial City of Guiana." Here reigns the Gilded King
himself, called El Dorado by the Spanish conquistadores because of a
dazzling ceremony. "When they are anointed all over, certain servants
of the emperor, having prepared gold made into fine powder, blow it
through hollow canes upon their naked bodies, until they be all shining
from the foot to the head." To this goal of so many adventurers Sir
Walter never came. He did indeed discover evidences of gold mines,
he made a large map of the Orinoco, and he became convinced that
England should possess Guiana.
"Those commanders and chieftains that shoot at honour and abundance
shall find there more rich and beautiful cities, more temples adorned with
golden images, more sepulchres filled with treasure, than either Cortes found
in Mexico or Pizarro in Peru. And the shining glory of this conquest will
eclipse all those so far-extended beams of the Spanish nation."
The story of these voyages and battles should be read by every
American. We too often forget that these Elizabethan exploits are a
part of our own history ; that they are the exploits of our own ancestors.
The fight of the Revenge was our fight. The victory over the Spanish
Armada was our victory. We circled the globe with Drake in the
Golden Hind. We are the breed of the Shepherd of the Ocean. Our
grand fleet—the combined fleet of Anglo-Saxon folk—is today the bul-wark
of the world.
When the death of Elizabeth came in 1603, the shadow of the axe
swept over the poet and courtier, the soldier and voyager. The days
of action were over : now followed the period of contemplation
—
thirteen years in the Tower. And Sir Walter, over fifty years of age,
sat down in his cell to write—oh, soaring ambition ! oh, superb confi-dence
!—the History of the World. This work is the greatest monu-ment
of his literary fame. Ralegh saw the stream of the world in the
large. He conceived history as a gigantic unit, as a stupendous moral
drama. "We may gather out of history a policy no less wise than
eternal; by the comparison and application of other men's fore-passed
miseries with our own like errors and ill deservings." In the account
of Jerusalem, Babylon, Assyria, Macedon, Greece, and Rome, he em-phasizes
the retribution which overwhelms "great conquerors and other
troublers of the world" who disobey the laws of God and man.
Tercentenary of Sir Walter Raleigh 53
Ralegh had always been a scholar and patron of learning. lie never
went to sea without a chest of books to read when no Spaniards were
in sight. Now that he was confined to quarters in the Bloody Tower,
his reading became intensive. He cites in his History no less than six
hundred and sixty authors. Many subjects engaged his attention and
he wrote many treatises, political, philosophical, and military, among
which are: The Prerogative of Parliaments in England, The Prince,
or Maxims of State, The Cabinet Council, Observations concerning the
Royal Navy and Sea Service, and A Discourse on War in General.
Several of these as well as the History itself Ralegh wrote for the
instruction of Henry, the young Prince of Wales, who was much
attached to him. ^'Who but my father," cried the Prince, "would keep
such a bird in a cage !"
Voluminous as were the writings of those long years of imprison-ment,
only the History of the World was published in his lifetime. This
took rank at once as a superb masterpiece. It was the first great his-torical
work in English. It exercised a strong influence on the Puri-tans.
It nourished many of the finest spirits of the succeeding age
—
Hampden, Cromw^ell, Montrose.
The book itself is a pageant of monarchies. Ancient kings and
queens sweep past us; the drums and tramplings of innumerable con-quests
resound from afar. The wreck of empires is shot through with
bright interludes of Ralegh's own experience—the Battle of Moncon-tour,
the capture of Fayal, the tactics of the Armada. His prose is
clothed in regal state, and his style swells to the mighty theme of God's
punishment of cruel and unrighteous monarchs. His majestic organ-note
can best be appreciated if his opening lines on the attributes of
God, and his last page, the Apostrophe to Death, are read aloud in
a cathedral.
"It is Death that puts into man all the wisdom of the world, without
speaking a word, which God, with all the words of his law, promises, or
threats, doth not infuse. Death, which hateth and destroyeth man, is be-lieved;
God, which hath made him and loves him, is always deferred; I
have considered, saith Solomon, all the works that are under the sun, and,
tehold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit; hut who believes it, till Death
tells us? It was Death, which opening the conscience of Charles the Fifth,
made him enjoin his son Philip to restore Navarre; and king Francis the
First of France, to command that justice should be done upon the murderers
of the Protestants in Merindol and Cabrieres, which till then he neglected.
It is therefore Death alone that can suddenly make man to know himself.
He tells the proud and insolent, that they are but abjects, and humbles them
at the instant, makes them cry, complain, and repent, yea, even to hate their
forepast happiness. He takes the account of the rich, and proves him a
iDeggar, a naked beggar, which hath interest in nothing but in the gravel
54 E'oRTH Carolina Historical Association
that fills his mouth. He holds a glass before the eyes of the most beautiful,
and makes them see therein their deformity and rottenness, and they ac-knowledge
it.
eloquent, just, and mighty Death! whom none could advise, thou hast
persuaded; what none hath dared, thou hast done; and whom all the world
hath flattered, thou only hast cast out of the world and despised; thou hast
drawn together all the far-stretched greatness, all the pride, cruelty, and
ambition of man, and coyered it all over with these two narrow words,
Hie jacetr
The pulse of balanced sentences, the sonorous tones, the magnificent
cadences—were they not the rhythms of surging waves echoing in his
ears and reverberating in his Devon heart, as he sat writing in his
cell—silent but for the lapping of Thames-ripples at the Traitors'
Gate?
*1 > '^'?)
- X^\
! ,^-«%
Tercentenaey of Sir Walter Raleigh 55
Raleigh's Place in American Colonization
By Charles M. Andrews
Farnam Professor of American History in Yale University
I value the opportunity which you have given me today of taking
some part in recalling the memory of one, who though never an actual
participant in the upbuilding of this town and state, has a high place
among those Avhom you like to hold in grateful remembrance. Sir
Walter Raleigh never set foot upon the soil of this country, yet he
stands in your annals as one of the founders of North Carolina, pro-moter
of colonization on its shores, and projector of the "great city
of Raleigh," that shadowy precursor of the greater city of Raleigh to
come, which by virtue of its name will ever remain a permanent monu-ment
of Raleigh's place in your minds and hearts. It is no part of
my purpose here to deal with the life of the man whom you have thus
signally honored or with the colony which he established—the lost
colony of Roanoke. I must leave to others the treatment of these invit-ing
topics and confine myself to the more limited, yet no less impor-tant
subject of Raleigh's place in American colonization. The theme
is one of great dignity and significance, and associated as it is with
the larger problems of colonial settlement has a charm and fascination
that are peculiarly its own.
The variegated fabric of American colonization is woven of many
colors representative of the diversified motives and influences that
stirred the men of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to risk their
lives and their fortunes in the western seas. Some freighted their keels
with the pure lust of excitement, seeking novel experiences in a world
enwrapt with mystery and charged with that irresistible attraction
which ever lures men onward toward the unknown. Some sought treas-ure
and booty, aroused by the exultant hope of riches from mines of
gold and silver and seeing in the plundering of Spanish plate fleets not
only a royal road to fortune but an opportunity also for revenge on
the Spanish colossus, which threatened England in the Great Armada
and lay athwart the path of her mariners in the waters and shores of
the central Atlantic. Some with an eye to a more legitimate profit
deemed the islands and coasts of the western world a lucrative field
for the investment of capital and hoped for returns on their outlay
that would double their fortunes and furnish an ample supply of those
tropical commodities that were fast becoming a necessary part of the
Englishman's daily life. Some, a noble and inspiring band, with their
eyes raised to Heaven but not eschewing the things of this world, came
as wandering pilgrims, seeking a refuge from religious persecutions
56 IN'oETH Carolina Historical Association
and an opportunity to worship God in their own way. Some, though
their numbers were never large, wanted political freedom, and driven
from England by the autocratic methods of the second Stuart, en-deavored,
often blindly, to apply their ideas of government in a new
world. And some, by far the most numerous of all, hampered and
harrassed by political ruler and landed proprietor in their efforts to
earn a living for themselves and their children in their native land,
and seeing across the Atlantic boundless areas of unoccupied soil and
no less boundless opportunities for the planting of homes and the rear-ing
of families, came not for booty or profit or for religious and
political freedom, but for the one purpose of solving that most impor-tant
of human problems, the problem of existence.
All of these motives and impulses were directly or indirectly at work,
aiding in the great task of building up a new society on the soil of
America. Those w^ho acted under the pressure of these influences served
each in his own way the cause of trans-Atlantic colonization and deserve
each according to his accomplishment the praise and recognition that
belong to the pioneers in a mighty historical movement. JSTo single
force impelled these men or the women who came later to leave home
and country, endure long and harrowing voyages, and face danger and
frequently death in order to take up their habitation in a frontier land
of islands and continent across three thousand miles of tempestuous
sea. To establish permanently upon the shores of the western Atlantic
the first tiny settlements that mark the beginning of this republic of
ours required the combined activities of hundreds and thousands of
stouthearted men and women, possessed of many differences of mind
and body, of many gradations of physical courage and spiritual faith,
and of many sorts of experience accumulated through more than half
a century of failure and success. Those who endured and survived were
not merely the founders of a nation, they were as well the last actors
in a struggle, characterized by glorious, soul-stirring enterprise, that
had long been pre^^aring the way for final success and permanent
settlement.
The forerunners of colonization in America were in their way as
necessary to the attainment of the desired end as were the actual
colonists themselves. They were the real pioneers to whom it was given
to spy out the land, observing the coasts and testing the waters, and
to narrate, often in glowing terms the wonders of the deep and the
richness and beauty of soil and country. They mapped out the path of
western advance ; in their small vessels of limited tonnage, they learned
of winds and tides, reefs and shoals, and rivers and harbors ; in their
reports they told of their experiences, pictured the marvels and curiosi-ties
of the new countries, described the flora and fauna of the regions
Tercentenary of Sir Walter Raleigh 57
they visited, and gradually filled in the hitherto unknown spaces of
the great canvas of the West with scenes of actual people and actual
life. Theirs were the labor and skill that developed a terra incognita
into real waters, lands, and peoples; that transformed a world of
imagination into a world of facts, a world of mystery and darkness
into a world of knowledge and light, an El Dorado into an America.
Just as we owe eternal gratitude to those who opened the gateway to
our middle and farther West—to Gist, Boone, Clark, Lewis, Fremont,
and the Oregon pioneers—so Ave owe equal gratitude to those who
opened the gateway to the JSTew World, the western frontier of the
maritime states of Europe, who "blazed the trail" across the waters in
the face of winds and storms, braving fogs and treacherous currents,
as appalling as the terrors of the western wilderness, and threatened
by corsairs and pirates, avenging Spaniards and crafty Algerines, who
were as much to be feared as were the red men of the forests.
To this era of forerunners, to this preparatory period in the history
of American colonization belongs the figure of that illustrious man,
whose death on the scaffold on October 29, three hundred years ago,
we are met here today to commemorate. Sir Walter Raleigh belongs
to that dim, half mythical period of American history, the period of
discovery and exploration, which is filled with the deeds of individual
heroes, daring and reckless men, and stands in striking contrast to
the later and more prosaic period of actual colonization. To the
Englishman at home the J^ew World of Raleigh's day was still an
El Dorado ; the seas were still peopled by monsters ; the lands were
dotted with cities of fancied magnificence and emboweled with mines
of fabulous wealth; and men's dreams of the tropical world were as
strange as were their superstitions, their belief in portents, their ex-planation
of the mechanism of the human body, and their interpre-tation
of the solar system and other phenomena of nature. The age was
one of discovery in more ways than one, but it was easier to explore
the earth's surface than it was to penetrate the mysteries of the human
anatomy or to unravel the laws governing the movements of sun and
tide, earthquake and storm. Though Raleigh was able to sail overseas
and to see much and to hear more of that which concerned the lands
beyond the western horizon, he died three years before Harvey an-nounced
to his fellow-men the epoch-making discovery of the circulation
of the blood ; and he suffered in his death from laws that were as crude
in their application to social and political life as were the reasons men
gave three centuries ago for the familiar phenomena of the physical
universe.
The literature from which we gain our knowledge of the adventures
and exploits of this age of romantic activity is closely akin to that
58 I^ORTH Carolina Historical Association
which tells us of similar happenings in the childhood of other peoples
than our own. Our epics and sagas are the tales and chronicles of
voyages, told by the participants themselves or taken down at their
dictation. These prose epics of the English and American nations,
some of which came from Portuguese, Spanish, and French sources,
were collected, often translated, and finally published by that lovable
press agent of adventure, ^Kichard Hakluyt of Oxford and Westminster,
himself one of the leaders of the western movement, because though
only a humble preacher and gatherer of other men's tales, he turned
by means of his publicity the thoughts of his contemporaries toward
the glories of the western world. These voyages or "principal navi-gations,"
as he calls them, are veritable Odysseys of the sea, stories of
wandering suffering, brave deeds and famous victories, calamities, suc-cesses,
and sudden deaths, and like all personal narratives, unsupported
by official or other authentic evidence, are frequently open to suspicion
as containing sometimes less and sometimes more than the facts, did
we know them all, would warrant. For we must remember that very
few official records appear to substantiate the chronicles of voyages
—
a few patents and letters of marque, a few entries of returns to the
royal exchequer, an occasional reference to state interference, when
in excess of zeal against Spain, privateers in so-called "voyages of
discovery" made trouble for the crown or its ministers and involved
the government in some perplexities of policy. In this period of storm
and stress, when the young English nation, rapidly growing to man's
estate, was moved by the Crusader's zeal for excitement and experience
in a larger world, the state took neither lead nor responsibility, con-tenting
itself with sanctioning or condoning private enterprise and
sharing in some of the profits of marauding expeditions. Later when
the state entered the field and assumed control of colonies that private
energy had established, official records steadily increased and the per-sonal
narrative gave way to sources that bear an official stamp. The
place of the saga was taken by the authoritative record and the age
of the Elizabethan adventurer merged into the period of organized
colonization and permanent settlement.
Of the many conspicuous individuals of this age of personal prowess
none was more pre-eminent than the versatile, resourceful, and cour-ageous
Sir Walter Raleigh or more loyally devoted to his sovereign and
his country. Raleigh filled his part, at one time or another, as poli-tician
and courtier, soldier and sailor, historian and philosopher, with
adroitness, bravery, and wise circumspection. He knew the ways of
the court and played the gallant to his queen with the same ease that
he trod the deck of his ship, or appeased his mutinous sailors with
promises of wealth from mines and galleons. He was daring even tO'
Tercentenary of Sir Walter Raleigh 59
recklessness in his efforts to find in Venezuelan territory the gold of
Manoa and judicially calm as lie gazed out over the world from his
prison room in the Tower and essayed to write with dignity and dis-passion
the history of the human race. He could dissimulate with the
true instinct of a courtier when involved in the intrigues of the court
and the whims of his royal mistress, yet he could face the block with
an openness of soul, from which all untruth was purged, and utter that
noblest of all his sayings, true epitaph of his better self, "What matter
how the head lie, so that the heart be right." There is no one connected
with American history who possessed and exercised such a variety of
gifts as did this philosopher, writer, courtier, and traveler of Eliza-bethan
England.
But his very versatility had its dangers and limitations. Raleigh has
nowhere identified himself with great issues or forward movements in
politics, religion, diplomacy, or social relations. His place in literature,
though assured, depends upon a few lyrics of exceptional sweetness,
on a narrative that is possessed of considerable descriptive power, and
on passages in his history of the world that are of striking beauty and
philosophical breadth—in all a very slender output. He possessed a
powerful personality, which will always arrest the world's attention
because of the interest which all men have in lives of dramatic action;
and he claims our sympathy because of that eternal instinct for justice
which is aroused for a man who is a victim of a state policy controlled
by a pedant king and upheld by the vicious principle that one is guilty
unless he can prove himself innocent. Yet when all is said, the fact
remains that Raleigh's chief claim to the attention of the historian
lies in the share which he had in the discovery and colonization of the
'New World. He was in very truth one of the charter members of the
most important experiment in colonization that the world has ever seen,
an experiment that not only has brought into existence this rich and
powerful republic of ours, but also has transformed a small island
kingdom into what is likely to become a far-flung British imperial
federation of self-governing nations, scattered in all parts of the world,
yet held together by bonds of sentiment and loyalty that are stronger
than the strongest of political and legal ties. Whoever had part in
this, the most important movement of modern times, has secured for
himself a permanent place in history.
Raleigh combined in himself three types of adventurous activity.
First of all, he promoted voyages of plunder and discovery; secondly,
as registered sea-captain, he himself sailed into the heart of the Spanish
Caribbean, leading expeditions in search of the gold of Guiana; and
lastly, he inaugurated one of the first English attempts to establish a
colony on American soil. Thus he was capitalist, sea-dog, and colonizer
60 l^OKTH Carolina Histoeical Association
in one, covering in his ambitions more varieties of enterprise than any
one else of his day. He never circumnavigated the globe, as did Drake
and Cavendish; he had no such tragically venturesome career as had
his cousin, Sir Richard Grenville ; and he never personally shared in
the life of a colony, as did William Penn and some of the Calverts.
But he covered a wider range of overseas undertakings than any of
these, and justly earned that appellation bestowed upon him by his
friend, the poet Spenser, of "Shepherd of the Ocean."
There is an absorbingly interesting painting by Sir John Millais
which represents the boy Walter, sitting with a companion on the
rocks at Budleigh Salverton in South Devonshire, gazing with rapt
attention at a bronzed and hardy sailor, muscular and weather-worn,
who as he spins his yarn of adventure points with enthusiasm toward
the western horizon lying beyond the sweep of ocean visible in the
background, ISTo one seeing this painting can but feel the zest of desire
that filled the souls of the boys and men of Elizabethan England.
Raleigh was born and bred in Devonshire, that land of bold mariners
and early maritime activity; he was related to many Devonshire and
Cornish families, trained to the sea and familiar with its delights and
its terrors; and he was thoroughly acquainted with the coming and
going of men and ships from the nearby towns of Bristol, Plymouth,
Dartmouth, Barnstaple, Bideford, and other centers of sea-faring life
and experience, so well known to readers of Kingsley's stirring tale,
Westward Ho. It is little wonder that one who was so early steeped
in the lore of the West should have been at all times a sailor at heart
and should have displayed through life a yearning and love for the
sea that betrayed itself not only in his actions but in his writings also
whenever he had opportunity to give it expression. He was twenty-six
years old, t

PORTRAIT OF RALEGH IN THE THIRD EDITION OF "THE HISTORY
OF THE WORLD," 1617
The Only Portrait of Him Published During His Lifetime
^\]f-hn oo.as"
PROCEEDINGS
OF THE
State Literary and Historical Association
of North Carolina
Compiled by
R. D. W. CONNOR
Secretary
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Edwabds & Beoughton Pbintinq Co.
State Pbintees
1919
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The North Carolina Historical Commission
J. Bbyaw Grimes, Chairman, Raleigh..
D. H. Hill, Raleigh. T. M. Pittman, Henderson.
M. C. S. Noble, Chapel Hill. Frank Wood, Edenton.
R. D. W. Connor, Secretary, Raleigh.
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Officers of the State Literary and Historical Association
of North Carolina
1917-1918
President James Spbunt, Wilmington.
First Vice-President Miss Maey O. Graham, Raleigh.
Second Vice-President C. C. Peaeson, Wake Forest.
Third Vice-President Miss Carrie Jackson, Pittsboro.
Secretary-Treasurer R. D. W. Connor, Raleigh.
Executive Committee
(With Ahove Officers)
Edwin Greenlaw, Chapel Hill. A. L. Brooks, Greensboro.
Miss Julia Alexander, Charlotte. Joseph B. Cheshire, Raleigh.
Miss Adelaide Fries, Winston-Salem.
PURPOSES OF THE STATE LITERARY AND HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION
"The collection, preservation, production and dissemination of State litera-ture
and history;
"The encouragement of public and school libraries;
"The establishment of an historical museum;
"The inculcation of a literary spirit among our people;
"The correction of printed misrepresentations concerning North Carolina;
and
—
"The engendering of an intelligent, healthy State pride in the rising
generations."
ELIGIBILITY TO MEMBERSHIP—MEMBERSHIP DUES
All persons interested in its purposes are invited to become members of
the Association. There are two classes of members: "Regular Members,"
paying one dollar a year, and "Sustaining Members," paying five dollars a
year.
RECORD OF THE STATE LITERARY AND HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION
(Organized October, 1900)
Fiscal Paid up
Years. Presidents. Secretaries. Membership.
1900-1901 Walter Claek Alex J. Peild 150
1901-1902 Henry G. Connor Alex J. Feild 139
1902-1903 W. L. PoTEAT George S. Fraps 73
1903-1904 C. Alphonso Smith Clarence Poe 127
1904-1905 Robert W. Winston Clarence Poe 109
1905-1906 Charles B. Aycock Clarence Poe 185
1906-1907 W. D. Pruden Clarence Poe 301
1907-1908 Robert Bingham Clarence Poe 273
1908-1909 Junius Davis Clarence Poe 311
1909-1910 Platt D. Walker Clarence Poe 440
1910-1911 Edward K. Graham Clarence Poe 425
1911-1912 R. D. W. Connor Clarence Poe 479
1912-1913 W. P. Few R. D. W. Connor 476
1913-1914 Archibald Henderson R. D. W. Connor 435
1914-1915 Claeenoe Poe R. D. W. Connor 412
1915-1916 Howard E. Rondthaler R. D. W. Connor 501
1916-1917 H. A. London R. D. W. Connor 521
1917-1918 James Sprunt R. D. W. Connor 453
1918-1919 James Sprunt R. D. W. Connor 377
THE PATTERSON MEMORIAL CUP
Conditions of Award Officially Set Forth by Mrs. Patterson.
To the President and Executive Committee of the Literary and Historical
Association of North Carolina:
As a memorial to my father, and with a view to stimulating effort among
the writers of North Carolina, and to awaken among the people of the State
an interest in their own literature, I desire to present to your society a
loving cup upon the following stipulations, which I trust will meet with
your approval, and will be found to be just and practicable:
1. The cup will be known as the "William Houston Patterson Memorial
Cup."
2. It will be awarded at each annual meeting of your association for ten
successive years, beginning with October, 1905.
3. It will be given to that resident of the State who during the twelve
months from September 1st of the previous year to September 1st of the
year of the award has displayed, either in prose or poetry, without regard
to its length, the greatest excellence and the highest literary skill and genius.
The work must be published during the said twelve months, and no manu-script
nor any unpublished writings will be considered.
4. The name of the successful competitor will be engraved upon the cup,
with the date of award, and it will remain in his possession until October
1st of the following year, when it shall be returned to the Treasurer of the
Association, to be by him held in trust until the new award of your annual
meeting that month. It will become the permanent possession of the one
winning it oftenest during the ten years, provided he shall have won it
three times. Should no one at the expiration of that period, have won it so
often, the competition shall continue until that result is reached. The names
of only those competitors who shall be living at the time of the final award
shall be considered in the permanent disposition of the cup.
5. The Board of Award shall consist of the President of the Literary and
Historical Association of North Carolina, who will act as chairman, and
of the occupants of the Chairs of English Literature at the University of
North Carolina, at Davidson College, at Wake Forest College, and at the
State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts at Raleigh, and of the
Chairs of History at the University of North Carolina and at Trinity College.
6. If any of these gentlemen should decline or be unable to serve, their
successors shall be appointed by the remaining members of the Board, and
these appointees may act for the whole unexpired term or for shorter time,
as the Board may determine. Notice of the inability of any member to
act must be given at the beginning of the year during which he declines to
serve, so that there may be a full committee during the entire term of each
year.
7. The publication of a member of the Board will be considered and
passed upon in the same manner as that of any other writer.
Mes. J. Lindsay Patterson.
Si PPLEMENTAEY RESOLUTION
According to a resolution adopted at the 1908 session of the Literary and
Historical Association, it is also provided that no author desiring to have
his work considered in connection with the award of the cup shall communi-cate
with any member of the committee, either personally or through a
representative. Books or> other publications to be considered, together with
any communications regarding them, must be sent to the Secretary of the
Association and by him presented to the chairman of the committee for
consideration.
AWARDS OF THE PATTERSON MEMORIAL CUP
1905
—
John Chaeles McNeill, for poems later reprinted in book form as
"Songs, Merry and Sad."
1906—Edwin Mims, for "Life of Sidney Lanier."
1907
Kemp Plummer Battle, for "History of the University of North Caro-lina."
1908
Samuel A'Court Ashe, for "History of North Carolina, Vol. I."
1909
^Clarence Poe, for "A Southerner in Europe."
1910—R. D. W. Connor, for "Cornelius Harnett: An Essay in North Carolina
History."
1911
Archibald Henderson, for "George Bernard Shaw: His Life and
Works."
1912—Clarence Poe, for "Where Half the World is Waking Up."
1913
Horace Kephart, for "Our Southern Highlanders."
1914—J. G. deR. Hamilton, for "Reconstruction in North Carolina."
1915
William Louis Poteat, for "The New Peace."
1916—No Award.
1917—Mrs. Olive Tilford Dargan, for "The Cycle's Rim."
1918—No Award.
WHAT THE ASSOCIATION HAS ACCOMPLISHED FOR THE STATE-SUCCESSFUL
MOVEMENTS INAUGURATED BY IT.
1. Rural libraries.
2. "North Carolina Day" in the schools.
3. The North Carolina Historical Commission.
4. Vance statute in Statuary Hall.
5. Fire-proof State Library Building and Hall of Records.
6. Civil War Battlefields marked to show North Carolina's record.
7. North Carolina's war record defended and war claims vindicated.
8. Patterson Memorial Cup.
Prefatory Note
The addresses included in this bulletin were prepared for presenta-tion
at the ^NTineteenth Annual Session of the State Literary and His-torical
Association of ]^orth Carolina which was to have been held at
Raleigh, October 28-29, 1918 ; but as the date for the session approached
the epidemic of influenza which was raging throughout the State and
Kation seemed to make it unwise to hold it. Since the addresses had
been prepared for a special occasion, it has seemed appropriate to the
Association to publish them in this form for permanent preservation.
R. D. W. Connor, Secretary.
Contents
PAGE
Introductory by the President 13
George Davis: President's Annual Address. By James Sprunt 15
Conference on Anglo-American Relations:
Introductory. By President James Sprunt 29
Ralegh, and British Imperialism. By Edwin Greenlaw 30
Sir Walter Ralegh as a Man of Letters. By Frank Wilson Chaney
Hersey 42
Raleigh's Place in American Colonization. By Charles M. Andrews 55
England and the Birth of the American Nation. By William Thomas
Laprade 77
The Converging Democracies of England and America. By William
E. Dodd 85
Anglo-American Diplomatic Relations During the Last Half Century.
By Charles H. Levermore 99
Social and Political Ideals of the English-Speaking Peoples. By
George Armstrong Wauchope 124
PROCEEDINGS
OF THE STATE LITERARY AND HISTORICAL
ASSOCIATION OF NORTH CAROLINA
Introductory Remarks Prepared by the President
The Wineteentli Annual Session of the State Literary and Historical
Association of l^orth Carolina is now convened.^ Before the Invocation
of Divine Guidance, it seems to me to be proper to say a few words.
Bishop Anderson has said: ^^In the great crisis through which this
country has been going for some past years the thing that decided the
issue was simply the question of right or wrong in the minds of the
people." Said he, "I believe I have opportunities for feeling the public
pulse. I do not think the people generally have asked many questions
about international law as between us and our enemy. They have not
been much concerned about European boundaries. I do not believe that
our people think that this is a commercial war. JSTo, it seems to me
that the great masses of our people have been asking old-fashioned ques-tions
about right and wrong. Is it right or is it wrong to keep our
word, to observe our treaties, to murder and slaughter innocent women
and children, to order the devastation of cities and churches and libra-ries,
to try to bring about a holy war between Mohammedans and Chris-tians?
Is it right or is it wrong to instigate all kinds of intrigue and
espionage and lying amongst people, to teach a doctrine of the state
which relieves the individual of all his moral obligations and which
instigates barbarous immoralities? The bulk of our people are facing
the issues of the day on a straight moral question : are things right or
wrong? And the great heart of America is rising every day higher and
higher in a moral passion. It says these things are wrong and they
can't endure in the world."
Every human experience has a counterpart in Holy Scripture. The
experiences through which our nation has been passing are strikingly
illustrated by the experience of the Hebrews in the days of King Heze-kiah.
The neighboring nations had been overwhelmed and carried away
captive by Sennacherib, King of Assyria, who was striving for world
dominion with all the brute force and ruthlessness at his command. In
the course of time this haughty King made demands upon Hezekiah and
his people to which they yielded until the insults were galling beyond
endurance and then they began to resist. The Assyrian army swept
forward. One city in Judah after another was captured and destroyed.
Jerusalem was besieged by a mighty army. Sennacherib's agents began
a propaganda among the Hebrew people and soldiers, to undermine
their morale and their faith. "Let not Hezekiah deceive you," they
^The session of course was not held.
14 !N'oKTH Caeolina Historical Association
cried, "for lie shall not be able to deliver you. Beware lest Hezekiab
persuade you saying, Jehovah will deliver us. Hath any of the gods
of the nations delivered his land out of the hand of the King of Assyria ?
Where are the gods of Hamath and Arphad ? And have they delivered
Samaria out of my hand ? Behold, thou hast learned what the Kings of
Assyria have done to all lands by destroying them utterly: and shalt
thou be delivered?"
Frightfulness and boastfulness were the weapons of the ancient
Assyrian heathen as well as of the modern German heathen. Hezekiah
met the taunts, the threats, and the menaces of the King of Assyria on
his knees before the King of Kings. He confessed the greatness and
the power of Jehovah above all gods and he said to his people: "Be
strong and courageous, be not afraid nor dismayed for the King of
Assyria, nor for all the multitude that is with him: for there be more
with us than with him; with him is an arm of flesh; but with us is
the Jehovah our Grod to help us fight our battles."
Hezekiah's faith in God was richly rewarded. By a terrible inter-position
of Providence, 185,000 Assyrian soldiers were stricken dead
before the gates of Jerusalem, and Sennacherib and the remnant of his
army fled back "with shame of face to their own land."
Acknowledgment of the Lord of Hosts and reliance upon His might
have turned the tide of many a battle since the days of Hezekiah. You
will recall how Philip of Spain, the most cruel and the most mighty
monarch of his time, tried to crush out civil and religious liberty in the
little land of Holland. His armies laid siege to Leyden and it seemed
as if all hope were gone, but those sturdy Hollanders were looking to
God and by a most timely Providential interference they were de-livered.
That same Philip assembled what was known as his Invincible
Armada for the crushing of civil and religious liberty in England.
And as far as human eye could see his Armada was invincible and it
looked as if England was doomed. But as John Richard Green well says,
the England of that day was a land of one book, and that book was the
Bible, and their faith was in the God of the Bible. By a mighty inter-vention
of wind and wave, God destroyed the Invincible Armada and
delivered England.
You will also recall, in the history of our own State, how Cornwallis
was pursuing General Greene and was about to capture or destroy his
little army and how Greene and his army were saved by the great
storm which turned the Catawba River into an impassable flood, and
you will recall how the very same thing happened again at the Yadkin
River. With this army reinforced, Greene fought the battle of Guilford
Court House which was the turning point in the American Revolution.
The Bible and history are full of these divine interferences and they
encourage us to turn our hearts today, with faith and confidence to
the God of hosts as we battle for liberty and justice and righteousness
in the earth.
George Davis 16
George Davis^
By James Sprunt
President of the State Literary and Historical Association
Francis Hall said:
"Life has been called a pilgrimage. It is one in many respects, and the
simile is never more applicable than when we make, at certain intervals,
a halt in the onward march of our ideas, to revert to the contemplation of
times gone by, and endeavor again to bring out the lineaments of events
and objects, which, like the rich and delicate-carved work of some ancient
cathedral, we perceive to be growing daily more indistinct, and in danger
of being finally blended into a mass of things, but nothing certain."
I have also thought of Doctor Trudeau's words:
"As a man nears the end of the earthly journey, and the evening comes and
the shadows lengthen, and the work is done, when there is no longer any
future to look forward to in this world, and much of the joy of life has dis-appeared
from the present, he naturally turns his face not unwillingly to the
past, and is not at all averse to living over again for others some of the days
of sunshine and shadows, of pleasure and pain, and of strenuous activity
through which he has passed."
And so from the treasure house of abiding memories, the playground
of old age, I have drawn pen sketches of some Cape Fear men in
varied walks of life whose names should live among the immortals of
the Old :N'orth State.
At the intersection of two prominent streets in the City of Wilming-ton
in full view of our majestic river, there stands a heroic portrait
statue in bronze; its face towards the Cape Fear; the right hand ex-tended
with a characteristic gesture, the left hand rests lightly upon
the furled banner of the Lost Cause. It is the effigy of George Davis,
whose wisdom illustrated the principles of law and equity, whose
eloquence commanded the admiration of his peers, who was beloved for
his stainless integrity, and who, shining in the pure excellence of virtue
and refinement, exemplified with dignity and simplicity, with gentle
courtesy and Christian faith, the true heart of chivalry in Southern
manhood.
In early youth I attended an excellent Wilmington Academy known
as Jewett's School, in which, one day of the week was devoted to ex-ercises
of declamation.
The Wilmington legal bar at that time included such distinguished
men as the Wrights, Hills, Meares, Holmes, Empie, London, Hall,
^Prepared for the President's Annual Address.
16 North Carolina Historical Association
Cutlar, "Waddell, Poisson, Strange, Person, George Davis, in which
Mr. Davis was facile princeps. His masterful eulogy of Henry Clay
and other notable orations, had already established his reputation as
the most eloquent public speaker of the lower Cape Fear. Our pre-ceptor
encouraged his pupils to attend out of school hours the sittings
of our Superior Court of Law when an important civil or criminal
case was likely to engage an array of talented contestants; but when
it was whispered that Mr. Davis, as he was always called, would speak,
our boys, many of whom were the sons of prominent lawyers, assembled
with one accord in the Court Room, to study his style and vocabulary
and if possible to imitate this acknowledged leader in public debate and
pleadings. So I may say that almost from my childhood I had been
taught to reverence Mr. Davis and to link his personality with things
that are true and honest and just and pure and lovely and of good
report. Mr. Davis never appeared in a cause without careful and
thorough preparation. He was not a genius. All his achievements as
an orator, a counsellor, and pleader, were the result of studious appli-cation
and untiring industry, and we were taught that talent differs
from genius, as voluntary power differs from involuntary power. Mr.
Davis illustrated the sacred parable of the man to whom ten talents
were given and who brought to his lord ten talents more. I often walked
behind him on his way from his office to his residence and watched
with respectful and absorbing interest his gesticulations on the street,
while he rehearsed his speech for the following day. Seneca said that
it was the nature of a great mind to be calm and undisturbed, and
Cicero said that it was the part of a great mind to force itself away
from the emotions, and the reasoning faculty out of the rut of custom.
There was a dignity and repose in Mr. Davis' nature which repelled
familiarity and in his greatest orations he held the emotions in control.
He shone as a great light in Cape Fear history, and, although the
orb of his day has descended in the West, its reflected radiance still
gilds and glorifies the scenes he described so eloquently in words which
cannot die. A few years before the death of Mrs. Jefferson Davis it
was my high privilege to entertain frequently at my summer home at
Narragansett Pier that accomplished lady, and to enjoy the recital of
her charming reminiscences of scholars and statesmen eminent in the
public life of Washington and of Richmond in her day and generation
;
among whom she frequently mentioned Mr. J. P. Benjamin and Mr.
George Davis.
When I informed her by letter of the death of our Mr. Davis, she
replied in terms of deep emotion and affectionate regard
:
George Davis 17
"I am able to sit up a little, and regret that I am not strong enough to
say as much about dear Mr. George Davis as my heart dictates.
"He was one of the most exquisitely proportioned of men. His mind
dominated his body, but his heart drew him near to all that was honorable
and tender, as well as patriotic and faithful, in mankind. He was never
dismayed by defeat, but never protested. When the enemy was at the gates
of Richmond he was fully sensible of our peril, but calm in the hope of
repelling them, and if this failed, certain of his power and will to endure
whatever ills had been reserved for him.
"His literary tastes were diverse and catholic, and his anxious mind found
relaxation in studying the literary confidences of others in a greater degree
than I have ever known in any other public man except Mr. Benjamin.
"My husband felt for him the most sincere friendship, as well as confi-dence
and esteem, and I think there was never the slightest shadow inter-vened
between them.
"I mourn with you over our loss, which none who knew him can doubt
was his gain."
Of him our distinguislied scholar and writer, Prof. Henry E. Shep-herd,
said to me
:
"Mr. George Davis's name was as a household word on the Cape Pear in
my circle. He was a masterful illustration of all the forces, social, moral,
intellectual, that portray the civic virtues, and make for the higher and
nobler types of righteousness." And in a review of the great men of North
Carolina of the Revolutionary period, and of later epochs up to the war
between the States, and since its termination, "a galaxy of moral excellence,
the most perfect, of intellectual ability, the most eminent, of fidelity, the most
unwavering."
Cicero Harriss said
:
"I consider one illustrious man with an approach to care and with a
desire to do all justice with whom I put him in comparison. That man is
the peerless orator of the Cape Fear, the lawyer and statesman, the almost
incomparable citizen, beloved and venerated by his friends and neighbors and
highly respected by all with whom he came in contact. I entirely agree with
the estimate of the personal character, the varied ability and the public
services of the late George Davis as expressed in chaste, unaffected language,
but with discriminating care by his kinsman and former fellow citizen,
Samuel A. Ashe. Rightly to appreciate the great Wilmingtonian one has to
know him as he was at home and performed his labors, public and private,
among the people whom he loved best on earth and who knew best his own
transcendent worth and glorious talents. It was said with truth several
times that Mr. Davis did his very greatest work there in the presence and
hearing of his own people, that his finest law arguments, most symmetrical
orations on historical and literary subjects, were delivered in the old opera
house to a Cape Fear audience. I think this must have been true, and yet
that elegant Chapel Hill address was worthy of a great orator. It is not
for this writer to try to be ornate and critical on such a subject, even if he
2
18 N^ORTH Carolina Historical Association
could be on any topic. Mr. Davis so commanded the veneration and the
deep outward respect of his true friends that they prefer to speak of him
with unaffected simplicity. So simple and yet majestic was his own life
that ornamentation in describing his attributes would be out of place. There
never was a better illustration of the simple life ever lived by man of great
intellect and deep emotions. He seemed always under control. Even the
occasional bursts of imagination in his speeches were pruned of luxuriance.
There was all through his public addresses a rigid classicism, which, however,
was not chilling, but had a polished surface of geniality. Never gushing,
he never repelled. You watched for the noble passages, but he indulged in
unusual feeling sparingly. Hence his power. It was the power of a truly
great imaginative mind. Behind it all, you felt, was the genuine heart of
the orator. I recollect that the whole packed audience one night was moved
to mighty enthusiasm when he apostrophised the Cape of Fear in a short
concluding paragraph of what had been one of his greatest orations."
It was my rare fortune to stand in intimate relation to Mr. Davis
in his later years. From my youth up, I had regarded him with ardent
personal devotion. In private conversation in his home circle with his
charming family, in every walk of his honored life, he was to me the
highest type of a Christian statesman, philosopher and friend, and it
was because of this relation that upon his greatly lamented death, 23rd
of February 1896, I was entrusted by the Chamber of Commerce with
the preparation of a sketch of his life and service. We approached the
task to which we were assigned with a profound sense of our inadequacy
to offer anything worthy of that noble life, but with an earnest desire
to add to all the true and beautiful things that had been said of him,
some memorial that would more fully set forth the labors and achieve-ments
of the foremost citizen of our Cape Fear section. To do this we
thought nothing could be more appropriate than a free use of his own
writings and the testimony of his contemporaries at the various periods
of his life. What he said, what he wrote, and what he did, obtaining
thus a clearer conception and reminder of his high morality, his great
ability and his rare eloquence. We were also moved to this course by
the hope that it might inspire the rising generation with a desire to
study his career, and in a grateful people the resolve to rescue from
oblivion his scattered compositions.
This hurried tribute in the Chamber of Commerce comprised in part
extracts from his great eulogy on Henry Clay, his famous address at
the State University of 1855, "The Men of the Cape Fear in the Olden
Times,'^ inspiring many of his hearers to study this important patriotic
subject which had been long dormant in the mind of our cultivated
people. His great address in 1856 before the Literary Societies of the
Greensborough Female College, "A Rich and Well Stored Mind,^' his
George Davis 19
"Peace Congress" speech on the 2nd of March, 1861, his great Tilden
and Vance campaign speech, 3rd of November, 1876, of which the
gifted Doctor Kingsbury said
:
"The speech to which we listened is a very memorahle one. It will long
abide with us as one of those felicitous, rounded, finished efforts of a highly
endowed and noble intellect that will be a memory and a joy forever.
"As a composition the effort of Mr. Davis was very admirable. There was
humor, there was sarcasm, there was an exquisite irony, there were flashes of
wit, and there was an outburst of corrosive scorn and indignation, that were
wonderfully artistic and effective. At times a felicity of illustration would
arrest your attention and a grand outburst of high and ennobling eloquence
would thrill you with the most pleasurable emotions. The taste was exceed-ingly
fine, and, from beginning to end, the workings of a highly cultured,
refined, graceful and elegant mind were manifest. There were passages
delivered with high dramatic art that would have electrified any audience on
earth. If that speech had been delivered before an Athenian audience in the
days of Pericles, or in Rome when Cicero thundered forth his burning and
sonorous eloquence, or in Westminster Hall, with Burke, and Fox, and
Sheridan among the auditors, he would have received their loudest acclaims,
and his fame would have gone down the ages as one of those rarely gifted
men who knew well how to use his native speech and to play with the touch
of a master on that grand instrument, the human heart.
"We would refer at length, if opportunity allowed, to the scheme of his ar-gument,
to his magnificent peroration, in which passion and imagination
swept the audience and led them captive at the will of the magician; to the
exquisitely opposite illustrations, now quaint and humorous and then deli-cate
and pathetic, drawn with admirable art from history and peotry and
the sacred Truth—to these and other points we might refer.
"How can words, empty words, reproduce the glowing eloquence and en-trancing
power of the human voice, when that voice is one while soft as
Apollo's lute, or resonant as the blast of a bugle under the influence of
deep passion? How can human language bring back a forgotten strain or
convey an exact impression made by the tongue of fire when burdened with a
majestic eloquence?"
His last public address was a matchless memorial of his beloved
Chief, Jefferson Davis, at the Opera House in 1889, on which occasion
he spoke without notes, nor was there a stenographer present, but I
had the honor of preserving that memorable tribute and of putting it
in print as the last public utterance of this beloved leader of the Cape
Fear. It is as follows
:
"The last appearance of Mr. Davis before a general audience was at the
mass-meeting in the Opera House, in 1889, to do honor to the memory of
ex-President Davis. He was already in feeble health, and unequal to an
oration, but the tenderness and sweetness of his personal reminiscences, as
he presented the side of his friend's character that was least known to the
world, will abide in the memory of those who heard him, like the lingering
20 ^ORTH Carolina Historical Association
fragrance of flowers that have faded and passed away. In the concluding
passage, in which he spoke of the President's religious faith, he uncon-sciously
reflected his own simple and abiding trust in God; and we can find
no words which more fittingly describe the Christian life of our Mr. Davis,
than those that he uttered of his dead chieftain:
" 'He was a high-souled, true-hearted Christian gentleman, and if our poor
humanity has any higher form than that, I know not what it is. His great
and active intellect never^ exercised itself with questioning the being of God,
or the truth of His revelations to man. He never thought it wise or smart
to scoff at mysteries which he could not understand. He never was daring
enough to measure infinite power and goodness by the poor, narrow guage
of a limited, crippled human intellect. Where he understood, he admired,
worshipped, adored. Where he could not understand, he rested unquestion-ingly
upon a faith that was as the faith of a little child—a faith that never
wavered, and that made him look always undoubtingly, fearlessly, through
life, through death, to life again.' "'
In tliat address also occurs the following passage^ which is worthy of
all preservation as the declaration of one of commanding intellect and
wide experience, after he had reached the limit of three-score years
and ten, as to what attribute he considered of the highest value in
human character:
"My public life was long since over; my ambition went down with the
banner of the South, and, like it, never rose again. I have had abundant time
in all these quiet years, and it has been my favorite occupation, to review
the occurrences of that time, and recall over the history of that tremendous
struggle; to remember with love and admiration the great men who bore
their parts in its events.
"I have often thought what was it that the Southern people had to be most
proud of in all the proud things of their record? Not the achievement of
our arms! No man is more proud of them than I, no man rejoices more in
Manassas, Chancellorsville and in Richmond; but all nations have had their
victories. There is something, I think, better than that, and it was this,
that through all the bitterness of that time, and throughout all the heat of
that fierce contest, Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee never spoke a word,
never wrote a line that the whole neutral world did not accept as the very
indisputable truth. Aye, truth was the guiding star of both of them, and
that is a grand thing to remember; upon that my memory rests more proudly
than upon anything else. It is a monument better than marble, more durable
than brass. Teach it to your children, that they may be proud to remember
Jefferson Davis."
There were also in my collection many notes of legal arguments,
personal reminiscences, interviews and private utterances.
With the preparation of this memorial, I was inspired with the
ambition to collect from many sources an epitome of his incomparable
compositions, addresses, political speeches, arguments at the bar, in
the home circle, in the local associations in which his primacy is uni-versally
conceded, and in his development as is revealed in the broaden-ing
ranges of his professional and political career, when he was the
George Davis 21
colleague of Judali P. Benjamin, the trusted counsellor of Jefferson
Davis, shaping some august decree and guiding the destiny of the new-born
Confederacy, and to write a biography more worthy of such an
honored theme.
"We see ourselves his cherished guests,
His partners in the flowery walk of letters, genial table talk,
of deep disputes and graceful jests;
While now his properous labor fills the lips of men with honest
praise and sun by sun, the happy days
Descend below the golden hills."
In pursuance of this purpose, for several years after his death I
gathered, sometimes day by day, the desired material for this labor of
love in many manuscrij^ts and memoranda, which I carefully secreted
in a private desk, which would be safe from intrusion. Vain hope
!
During my temporary absence from home, a new Scotch domestic,
eager to prove her efficiency, invaded this sanctum sanctorum, emptied
the drawers of their precious contents into the furnace fire and utterly
destroyed these priceless papers, and my ambition to be another minor
Boswell. But I doubt not there will arise from this membership a
capable biographer, with every characteristic requisite; knowledge,
sympathy, sweetness and light, the elements that mark as well as form
the philosophic mind. Would that his gifted and beloved kinsman,
Samuel A'Court Ashe, who in his masterful presentation of Mr. Davis'
portrait to the Supreme Court of JSTorth Carolina, October 19th, 1915,
paid tribute to his great exemplar, or his devoted personal friend,
Eugene S. Martin, who as dean of the Wilmington Bar was requested
by the ^orth Carolina Bar Association to review the life and service
of their distinguished and lamented brother, which he did in a eulogy
of great power and beauty before the Association in Asheville in August,
1915 ; or his chief biographer. Judge H. G. Connor, who presented to
the City of Wilmington in an eloquent oration the bronze effigy in
memory of our great leader of the Cape Fear on the 20th, of April,
1911; or our accomplished scholar and historian, J. G. deR. Hamilton,
might add to their perennial laurels a more extended life of him ^Vhom
history shall cherish among those choicer spirits, who, holding their
conscience unmixed with blame, have been in all conjunctures true to
themselves, their Country and their God."
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Anglo-American Relations
IN
Commemoration
OF THE
Tercentenary of Sir Walter Raleigh
ANGLO-AMERICAN RELATIONS
Explanatory Note
The death of Sir Walter Raleigh ou October 29, 1618, ended the life
of the most notable figure in the histoiy of Anglo-American coloniza-tion—
a figure of the first rank in the history both of Great Britain and
of the United States. The three hundredth anniversary of his death
found these two nations in close alliance in defence of those ideals of
English liberty which Raleigh, more than any other man, was instru-mental
in planting in America and in defence of which he suffered
martyrdom. It seemed, therefore, to a group of distinguished British
statesmen and scholars appropriate that the two great English-speaking
peoples of the world should take some note of the Tercentenary of his
death by commemorating in some suitable manner his life and services
and his contributions to our civilization. Accordingly under the leader-ship
of Dr. Israel Gollancz, Secretary of the British Academy, a Raleigh
Tercentenary Committee was organized in London, with Viscount
Bryce as Honorary Chairman, and under the auspices of this com-mittee
appropriate exercises were held in London.
In the spring of 1918, Dr. Gollancz consulted Dr. Walter Hines Page,
American Ambassador at the Court of St. James, as to the most suit-able
means of having a corresponding commemoration in the United
States. Dr. Page, accordingly, suggested the State Literary and His-torical
Association of ISTorth Carolina as the logical organization to
undertake the task in the United States and brought the matter to the
attention of the secretary of the Associatioc in a letter in which he
wrote
:
Next October will be the centenary of Sir Walter Raleigh. It has been
proposed by certain learned men here that some sort of celebration be made
of the fact and they have asked me what corresponding celebration, or co-operation,
or contribution to such a celebration I thought could be hoped
for from the United States. It at once came to my mind to write to you.
I do not know anybody who has a keener interest in Sir Walter Raleigh
than your Society, nor anybody who could with greater propriety take up
this interesting task.
No particular program has yet been made but they would welcome any
suggestions that you might make. Let me say off-hand that you might
organize a celebration in North Carolina having appropriate addresses and
any other proceedings that occur to you, and the English might have a cor-responding
thing here on the same day and letters could be written by your
group of people to them, and by them to you, to be read at each celebration
and perhaps telegrams exchanged also.
The suggestion seemed so appropriate that Dr. James Sprunt, Presi-dent
of the Association, and the Executive Committee, determined to
26 J^ORTH Carolina Historical Associatiois"
turn tlie 1918 session into a ^'Conference on Anglo-American Relations
in Commemoration of tlie Tercentenary of Sir Walter Raleigh" ; and
a program was accordingly prepared.
A committee of the Association, appointed to draft an address of
greetings to the Raleigh Tercentenary Committee, prepared and sent
the following address
:
TO THE SIR WALTER RALEIGH TERCENTENARY COMMITTEE:—
Greetings and hearty acclaim! The State Literary and Historical Association
of North Carolina hails with undisguised pleasure the new era upon which we
have entered. The study of English history by Americans and the study of
American history by Englishmen are no longer to be pursued as a means
of finding and accentuating differences, but as an opportunity of bringing
into clearer relief those common traditions and common ideals which alone
form the basis of an indissoluble union. iSir Walter Raleigh has been to
our country chiefly a link with a romantic but remote past. In the days
that are before us he will still remind us of an historic past, but he will
bind us not less to England that was, but more to England that is.
North Carolinians have never ceased to remember with pride that to Sir
Walter Raleigh and Sir Humphrey Gilbert history owes the first thought of
a new England on American soil, and that the colony planted by Raleigh on
Roanoke Island was the first colony of Englishmen to be settled in the new
world. Though the settlement failed, as men count failure, its undaunted
founder lived to see Roanoke become a stepping-stone to Jamestown and thus
to know that through his initiative the language and institutions of Eng-land
had found rootage in a new continent.
To the boys and girls of North Carolina every incident in the great sailor's
attempt, unsuccessful though it was, to found a permanent English colony
on North Carolina soil has in it the blended challenge of old world and new
world romance. Amadas and Barlowe, Manteo and Wanchese, Governor Lane
and John White, Virgina Dare and the White Pawn, the fateful word C r o a-t
a n , these names and the stories that enshrine them are a part of the
fireside lore of the State whose capital is Raleigh. On the monument to
Virginia Dare erected on Roanoke Island, in Dare County, under the auspices
of the State Literary and Historical Association, one may read the following
inscription:
On this site in July-August 1585 (O.S.) Colonists sent out from Eng-land
by Sir Walter Raleigh, built a Fort, called by them the New Fort
in Virginia. These Colonists were the first settlers of the English race
in America. They returned to England in July, 1586, with Sir Francis
Drake. Near this place was born on the 18th of August, 1587, "Virginia
Dare" the first child of English speaking parents, born in America, of
Ananias Dare and Eleanor White, his wife, members of another band of
Colonists sent out by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1587. On Sunday, August
20, 1587, "Virginia Dare" was baptized. Manteo, the friendly Chief of
Hatteras Indians, had been baptized on the Sunday preceding. These
baptisms are the first known celebrations of Christian Sacrament in the
territory of the Thirteen Original United States.
I
Tercentenary of Sir Walter Raleigh 27
But in the light of events now happening memorials like these assume a
new significance. They remind us not only of a common origin, but of a
common destiny; they point forward as well as backward; they speak not
of a tale that was old, but of a tale yet to be told. The mighty events that
are today remaking the history of the world have to their credit no finer
achievement than the instinctive rallying of England's far-flung colonies to
the defense of the island mother. Side by side with these colonies, barken-ing
to the same memories, inspired by the same faith, sustained by the same
vision, America has taken her stand. England was yesterday the land of
our fathers; she is today the land of our brothers.
The State Literary and Historical Association will devote its approaching
session to the Commemoration of the Tercentenary of Sir Walter Raleigh but,
as typifying the new movement, the meeting will be a Conference on Anglo-
American Relations. The spirit of that meeting and the spirit in which we
shall continue to honor the memory of Sir Walter Raleigh finds its truest
expression in the lines of one of your own poets:
We severed have been too long.
But now we are done with a worn-out tale
—
The tale of an ancient wrong
—
And our friendship shall last long as love doth last
And be stronger than death is strong.
James Speunt.
C. Alphonso Smith.
Jos. Blount Cheshire.
George Rountree.
The following messages were exchanged by cable:
London, October 28, 1918.
Historical Association,
Raleigh, N. C.
Proud of our common heritage in Raleigh, we send paternal greetings.
Raleigh Tercentenary Committee.
Raleigh, N. C, October 29, 1918.
Raleigh Tercentenary Committee,
London, England.
Greetings:—May Raleigh's memory be a perpetual bond between America
and her glorious Mother Country.
North Carolina Literary and Historical Association.
Exeter, October 28, 1918.
State Historical Association,
Raleigh, N. C.
Devonshire sends greetings on occasion of Raleigh Tercentenary.
Earl Fortescue, Lord Lieutenant.
28 ^ORTH Carolina Historical Association
Raleigh, N. C, October 29, 1918.
Eabl Fortesgue,
Exeter, England.
North Carolina, the scene of Raleigh's colonies, greets his native Devon-shire.
May his memory be a bond of union between America and her Mother
Country. North Carolina Literary and Historical Association.
For the reason already stated the Conference was not held, but
that the benefits which were expected to result from it might not be
wholly lost, the authorities of the Association determined to publish
the papers which were to have been read at the session. To the writers
who very kindly consented to this disposition of their addresses, the
Association returns its sincere thanks. The Association also acknowl-edges
with appreciation the kindness of Prof. W. F. C. Hersey in
permitting the use of the photographs which illustrate this volume.
R. D. W. Connor,
Secretary.
A CELL IN THE BLOODY TOWER WHERE RALEGH WAS CONFINED
THIRTEEN YEARS
From a drawing by J. Wykeham Archer, 1851
SITE OF BURIAL PLACE OF SIR WALTER RALEGH
South side of Altar, St. Margaret's Church, Westminster
ANGLO-AMERICAN RELATIONS
Introductory
By James Sprunt
President of The State Literary and Historical Association
It has been truly said that among the great gifts that God has given
to men is the gift of men ; and it has also been said that it sometimes
falls to the lot of an inexperienced chairman to have to introduce dis-tinguished
speakers of wide reputation. If his modesty is in keeping, as
it should be, with his lack of experience, he will share with his audience
a vivid sense of his own superfluousness. Such an embarrassment is
mine, because I have been invited to introduce to you during this session
men eminent in their respective spheres of usefulness, who will speak
to you on this occasion of the Tercentenary Commemoration of one whose
honored name is perpetuated by that of our Capital City, "who was
wholly gentleman, wholly soldier, who," said Mr. Davis, "falKng under
the displeasure of a scoundrel king, and languishing for twelve long
years under sentence of ignominious death, sent forth through his
prison bars such melodious notes that the very king's son cried out,
'No monarch in Christendom but my father, would keep such a bird in a
cage' ; who, inexhaustible in ideas and in exploits, after having brought
a new world to light, wrote the history of the old in a prison, and then
died because God had made him too great for his fellows—that name,
which to I^orth Carolina ears rings down through the ages like a glorious
chime of bells—the name of our great Sir Walter Raleigh."
Ralegh^ and British Imperialism
By Edwin Greenlaw,
Kenan Professor of English in the University of North Carolina
Ralegli is thouglit of as an adventurer and colonizer wlio typifies
the romance and daring of tlie Elizabethan age. This view is correct
enough, hut it is incomplete. The picturesque aspects of Ralegh's life
half conceal its real meaning.
In one of the most charming of his poems, Colin Clout's Come Home
Again, Edmund Spenser tells how he was induced by a friend whom
he met in his Irish exile to go with him to meet Cynthia, the great
Queen. Under the fanciful disguise of the pastoral conventions we see
how fully the poet entered into sympathy with the ambitions of the
man to whom he gave the happy title of the Shepherd of the Ocean.
It was in the late 80's; Spenser had been in Ireland almost ten years,
an exile because of his imprudence in defense of Leicester's opposition
to the Queen's marriage. He had himself had visions of usefulness in
matters of state, had desired to live the adventurous life of Sidney or
Ralegh, but his adventures were those of the imagination, woven into
the vision of the Faerie Queen. Three books of the great poem had been
completed when Ralegh, fresh from his Virginia enterprise and one of
the heroes of the defeat of the Spanish Armada, the very personifica-tion
of the virtues that Spenser sought to embody in his epic, settled
for a brief time on a neighboring estate. Ralegh himself was engaged
on an ambitious poem, of which only a fragment remains under the
title of "The Twenty-First and Last Book of the Ocean, to Cynthia."
The friends talked over their poems and their ambitions, and at
Ralegh's suggestion Spenser accompanied him to London to lay the
first books of his fairy epic at the feet of the Queen. It was a little
later, when Spenser had returned alone to Ireland and Ralegh was
vainly trying to get a chance to carry on active war against the Spanish
sea power, that the account was written of what had passed between
them in their talks on the long summer days in 1589. Spenser tells how
^Stebbing records 74 different forms known to have been used in spelling Sir Walter
Raleigh's name. "The spelling of his name for the first thirty-two years of his life was as
vague and unsettled as his acts. . . . Ralegh himself had not kept the same spelling
throughout his life. Down to 1583 his more usual signature had been the phonetic Rauley.
But in 1578 he signed as Rawleyghe a deed which his father signed as Ralegh, and his
brother Carew as Rawlygh. A letter of March 17, 1583, is the first he is known to have
signed as Ralegh ; and in the following April and May he reverted to the signature Rauley.
From June 9, 1584, he used till his death no other signature than Ralegh. It appears in
liis books when the name is mentioned. It is used in a pedigree drawn up for him in
1601. Of the hund^-ed and sixty-nine letters collected by Mr. Edward Edwards, a hundred
and thirty-five are thus signed. Six signed Rauley, one Raleghe, and one Rauleigh, belong
to an earlier date. The rest are either unsigned or initialled. The reason of his adop-tion
of the spelling Ralegh from 1584, unless that it was his dead father's, is unknown. Of
the fact there is no doubt. The spelling Raleigh, which posterity has preferred, happens
to be one he is not known to have ever employed."—Stebbing: Sir Walter Ralegh, pp. 30-31. —R. D. W. Connor.
FACSIMILE OF AUTOGRAPH IN LETTER TO MR. R. DUKE, DESIRING TO PUR-CHASE
HAYES BARTON, July 26, 1584
Tercentenary of Sir Walter Raleigh 31
they came to the sea and passed its terrors, and how his friend explained
that its high surges were the hills that belonged to Cynthia,
For land and sea my Cynthia does deserve
To have in her commandement at hand.
In this realm the Shepherd of the Ocean found his life work,
—
And I among the rest, of many least
Have in the Ocean charge to me assigned;
Where I will live or die at her beheast,
And serve and honour her with faithful mind.
And in the fragment of the book of Cynthia, written probably in 1593,
after he had seen Sir Richard Grenville given the place he had coveted
for himself, a command in the fleet that was to attack Spain once more
in the Azores, and after he had been called back by the Queen from
the expedition that he had planned for an attack on Panama, Ralegh
wrote, loyal though disappointed,
—
To seek new worlds for gold, for praise, for glory,
To try desire, to try love severed far.
When I was gone, she sent her memory,
More strong than were ten thousand ships of war;
To call me back, to leave great honour's thought,
To leave my friends, my fortune, my attempt;
To leave the purpose I so long had sought,
And leave both cares and comforts in contempt.
This sense of a destiny connected with the sea is apparent, therefore,
in Spenser's account of the Shepherd of the Ocean and in Ralegh's own
writings. But the key to the understanding of this destiny we find only
by taking into account Ralegh's later writings. The governing prin-ciple
of his life was his belief that England must master Spain and
that this mastery was to be won only through mastery of the sea. His
attempt to colonize Virginia is the first illustration of the working out
of this theory; England was to establish a colonial empire that was to
rival that of Spain. Ralegh's participation in the active warfare be-tween
Spain and England in 1588 and the years following, was the
next step. After 1595 his interest was divided between the ambition
to drive Spain out of South America and the ambition to bring about
the building of a great navy and a great merchant marine. When he
was free, he acted; when he was held in leash by the crochets of the
Queen and when later he was spending his best years in prison, he wrote
vigorously and well in defence of his ideas. The treatment he received
from Elizabeth was similar to that which Sidney had received; his
efforts were fruitless because of her vacillation and her distrust of the
whole progressive and imperialist school to which he belonged. The
32 !N'oRTH Carolina Historical Association
treatment lie received from James was wliat might be expected from
the narrow-minded and provincial pedant king ; at last lie was treacher-ously
sacrificed to satisfy the demands of the powerful enemy that he
had fought with sword and pen and personal influence throughout his
life.
I
Ralegh's attitude toward Spain is set forth in many places. His
contempt for Spanish boasts concerning the invincible Armada and
his conviction of the superior seamanship of the English are illustrated
in the opening paragraphs of his account of the Revenge. He had been
one of the members of the War Council appointed to make prepara-tions
against the threatened invasion/ was a careful student of the
strategy by which the English fleet won the victory, and was a staunch
defender of the thesis that England's safety depended on the main-tenance
of a powerful navy. In his tract opposing the projected mar-riage
of Prince Henry to a princess of Savoy he pointed out that if
Elizabeth had listened to her men of war she would have proceeded
with the war after 1588 until Spain had been utterly destroyed.^ In
the same tract he argued for an alliance between England and France
as a means for curbing Spain.^ Another tract advises alliance with
the I^Tetherlands, because of their great increase in sea power, in order
to remove the renewed danger from Spain.^ Similar tracts are
found among the voluminous works he wrote in captivity, such as "A
Discourse How War May Be Made Against Spain and the Indies."^ In
addition to alliances with France and the ISTetherlands, he held it
necessary to build a fleet powerful enough to conquer the Spanish
colonies in the new world. In ^^A Discourse Touching a War with
Spain," he says
:
But if now the king of Spain can obtain peace upon any condition reason-able,
so as he may fortify his weakness, both in Europe and the Indies, and
gather again sufficient riches, putting the English from the exercise of war
in those parts, and make us to forget his Indies, till those be consumed that
know them, he will soon grow to his former greatness and pride; and then,
if your majesty shall leave the Low Countries, and he find us by ourselves,
it will not be long ere he remembers his old practices and attempts.
6
The importance of the whole question in relation to the future of
England he compresses into a single sentence : "The dispute is no less
than of the government of the whole world." ^
'^Life, Oldvs, Oxford Edition, p. 92.
^Works, Oxford PMition, VIII, 246.
^Works, VIII, 251-252.
*Works, VIIT, 299 pp.
^Works, VIII, 308.
^Works, VIII, 309.
''Works, VIII, 316.
Tercentenary of Sir Walter Raleigh 33
This position Ralegli developed in a series of tracts remarkable for
their clear vision, the fullness of information which they display, and
the constancy with Avhich he held to a definite thesis. The various
tracts dwell on three closely related points : the necessity for England
to seize and maintain the control of the seas ; the means by which this
control is to be secured, through naval strategy, through a great mer-chant
marine, and through alliance with other sea powers against
Spain; and, finally, a colonial empire in America. Ralegh's perception
of these problems and the persistence with which he set forth his views
in the face of opposition so bitter as to make all his efforts nugatory
and eventually to bring him to ruin, prove him to have been a man
far in advance of his time.
On the first point, the duty of England to become a great sea power,
the material in Ralegh's writings is so great that anything like a full
presentation of it is impossible within the limits of a brief article. It
is his constant theme. He saw in Spain an enemy not only to the
religious faith of England but also to that which England must have
if she were to be anything but a dependent island kingdom. Spanish
boastfulness ; the treachery of Spanish propaganda, even among officers
and men on English ships of war; Spanish hypocrisy, which covered
all that they plotted with the ^Vayle of pietie" ; and Spanish ambition
to rule the world, a tyranny directed especially against the freedom of
England,—all find expression. The case against the gigantic menace of
Spain was never better put than by Ralegh, at the ernd of his account
of the fight of the Revenge:
But sure I am that there is no kingdom or commonwealth in all Europe
but if it bee reformed, they then invade it for religion sake; if it be as they
terme Catholike, they pretende title, as if the Kinges of Castile were the
naturall heires of all the worlde: and so betweene both, no kingdom is un-sought.
Where they dare not with their owne forces to invade, they basely
entertaine the traitors and vacabondes of all nations; seeking by those and
by their runnagate Jesuits to win partes, and have by that meane ruined
many noble houses and others in this land, and have extinguished both their
lives and families. What good, honour, or fortune ever man yet by them
achieved, is yet unheard of, or unwritten. And if our English Papistes do
but looke into Portugall, against whom they have no pretence of religion,
how the Nobilitie are put to death, imprisoned, their rich men made a pray,
and all sorts of people captived, they shall find that the obedience even of
the Turke is easie and a libertie, in respect of the slaverie and tyrannie of
Spaine. What they have done in Sicill, in Naples, Millayne, and in the low
countries; who hath there beene spared for religion at all? And it commeth
to my remembrance of a certaine Burger of Antwerpe, whose house being
entered by a companie of Spanish souldiers, when they first sacked the Citie,
hee besought them to spare him and his goodes, being a good Catholike, and
3
34 North Carolina Historical Association
one of their own partie and faction. The Spaniardes answered, that they
knew him to be of a good conscience for him selfe, but his money, plate,
jewels, and goodes were all hereticall, and therefore good prize. So they
abused and tormented the foolish Flamming, who hoped that an Agnus Dei
had beene a sufficient Target against all force of that holie and charitable
nation. Neither have they at any time as they protest invaded the king-domes
of the Indies and Peru, and els where, but onely led thereunto, rather,
to reduce the people to Christianitie, then for either golde or emperie. When
as in one onely Hand called Hispaniola, they have wasted thirtie hundred
thousand of the naturall people, besides manie millions els in other places
of the Indies: a poore and harmeless people created of God, and might have
beene won to his knowledge, as many of them were, and almost as manie as
ever were perswaded thereunto. The Storie whereof is at large written by
a Bishop of their owne nation called Bartholme de las Casas, and translated
into English and manie other languages, intituled The Spanish cruelties.
Who would therefore repose trust in such a nation of ravinous straungers,
and especially in those Spaniardes which more greedily thirst after English
bloud, then after the lives of anie other people of Europe; for the manie
overthrowes and dishonours they have received at our handes, whose weak-nesse
we have discovered to the world, and whose forces at home, abroad, in
Europe, in India, by sea and land, we have even with handfulles of men
and shippes, overthrowne and dishonoured. Let not therefore anie English
man of what religion soever, have other opinion of the Spaniards, but that
those whom hee seeketh to winne of our nation, hee exteemeth base and
traitorous, unworthie persons, or unconstant fooles: and that he useth his
pretence of religion for no other purpose but to bewitch us from the obedience
of our naturall prince, thereby hoping in time to bring us to slaverie and
subjection, and then none shall be unto them so odious, and disdained as
the traitours themselves, who have soldo their countrie to a straunger,
and forsaken their faith and obedience contrarie to nature or religion; and
contrarie to that humane and generall honour, not onely of Christians, but
of heathen and irreligious nations, who have alwaies sustained what labour
soever, and embraced even death it selfe, for their countrie, prince or com-mon-
wealth.8
Viewing the menace of Spain as lie did, Ealegli was able to point
out precisely the manner in which the safety of England was to be
assured. In a passage on naval transport, in the History of the World,
he wrote:
And to say the truth, it is impossible for any maritime Countrie, not hav-ing
the coasts admirably fortified, to defend it selfe against a powerful!
enemie, that is master of the Sea.9
This proposition he puts more positively a moment later, by saying:
But making the question generall and positive, Whether England, without
helpe of her fleet, be able to debarre an enemie from landing, I hold that it
is unable so to doe, and therefore I thinke it most dangerous to make the
^Sir Walter Raleigh: Selections from his Writings, ed. Hadow, pp. 161-163.
^Selections, ed. Hadow, p. 104.
Tercentenary of Sir Walter Raleigh 35
adventure. For the incoiiragement of a first victorie to an enemy, and the
discouragement of being beaten to the invaded, may draw after it a most
perilous consequence.io
This position lie defends by a long series of illustrations, part of
tliem consisting of a detailed examination of what would pretty surely
happen were a hostile army to be permitted to land on English soil,
and part of them drawn from his own experiences at Fayal in 1597.
The whole argument he concludes with the words:
For end of this digression, I hope this question shall never come to triall;
his Majesties many moveable Forts will forbid the experience. And although
the English will no lesse disdaine than any Nation under heaven can doe, to
be beaten upon their owne ground or elsewhere by a forraigne enemie; yet
to entertaine those that shall assaile us, with their owne beefe in their bellies
and before they eate of our Kentish Capons, I take it to be the wisest way.
To doe which, his Majestie, after God, will imploy his good ships on the Sea,
and not trust to any intrenchment upon the shore.
n
Finally, it should be pointed out that Ralegh saw clearly that the
menace of Spain consisted in large part in the treasure which was
supplied by South America, gold which was not only the sinews of war
for England's enemy but also a means of corruption everywhere. To
conquer Spain, therefore, meant not only the necessity of possessing
a superior war fleet but also the use of this fleet to cut off Spain's
source of supplies. The idea is expressed repeatedly in his writings
:
perhaps it is phrased most eloquently in the preface to his Discovery
of Gruiana, where, after pointing out that the great enterprise is likely
to fail through English indifference, he says:
If the Spanish nation had been of like belief to these detractors, we would
little have feared or doubted their attempts, wherewith we are now daily
threatened: but if we now consider of the actions both of Charles the Fifth,
who had the maidenhead of Peru, and the abundant treasures of Atabalipa,
together with the affairs of the Spanish king now living, what territories he
hath purchased, what he hath added to the acts of his predecessors, how
many kingdoms he hath endangered, how many armies, garrisons, and navies
he hath and doth maintain; the great losses which he hath repaired, as in
88 above one hundred sail of great ships, with their artillery, and that no
year is less unfortunate but that many vessels, treasures, and people are
devoured; and yet, notwithstanding, he beginneth again, like a storm, to
threaten shipwreck to us all; we shall find that these abilities rise not from
the trades of sack and Seville oranges, nor from ought else that either Spain,
Portugal, or any of his other provinces produce: it is his Indian gold that en-dangereth
and disturbeth all the nations of Europe; it purchaseth intelligence,
creepeth into councils, and setteth bound loyalty at liberty in the greatest
monarchies of Europe. If the Spanish king can keep us from foreign enter-
^'^S elections, ed. Hadow, p. 106.
^Selections, ed. Hadow, p. 113.
36 J^ORTH Carolina Historical Association
prises, and from the impeachment of his trades, either by offer of invasion
or by besieging us in Britain, Ireland, or elsewhere, he hath then brought the
work of our peril in great forwardness. ... I have therefore laboured
all my life, both according to my small power and persuasion, to advance all
those attempts that might either promise return of profit to ourselves, or at
least be a let and impeachment to the quiet course and plentiful trades of
the Spanish Nation.12
To destroy the menace of Spain Ralegli proposed to employ three
agencies, all of them connected with sea-power. The first of these was
the development of the naval strategy that had proved successful in
'88. Against the Spanish theory of large ships heavily manned with
soldiers who were to board and fight hand to hand, Ralegh proposed to
use light ships, fast and easily maneuvered, manned by comparatively
few men, and made formidable through ordnance. By extensive em-ployment
of ordnance, he says, "we might have commanded the seas,
and thereby the trade of the world itself." ^^ British prowess and naval
strategy, he tells King James, were once of a quality that forced
England's enemies not to "dispute de mari libero" but to acknowledge
"the English to be domini maris Britannici/'^'^ It seemed to him,
therefore, "exceedingly lamentable that for any respect in the world,
seeing the preservation of the state and monarchy doth surmount all
other respects, that strangers \_sc. the Hollanders, whose maritime trade
threatened to drive both Britain and Spain from the seas] should be
permitted to eat us out, by exporting and importing both our own
commodities and those of foreign nations: for it is no wonder we are
overtopped in all the trade we have abroad and far off, seeing we have
the grass cut from under our feet in our fields and pastures."!^
To recover this prestige Ralegh advised, over and over again, that
ships of the line be supplemented by the construction of a large number
of hoys, small ships armed with ordnance, through which the mightiest
armadas could be conquered.^^ He prepared for Prince Henry an
essay on the navy and sea-service that showed the most intimate
knowledge of ship-building, naval strategy, and personnel. i''' The fame
of past victories will not protect Britain ; the need for perfect prepara-tion
for a contest certain to come sooner or later is sufficient argument
against those who neglect the development of Britain's sea-power.^^
"Peace," he says, "is a great blessing of God, and blessed are the peace-makers;
and therefore, doubtless, blessed are those means whereby
"TForfcs, VIII, 388-389.
*^"A Discourse of the Invention of Ships," Works, VIII, 331.
^Hbid., 327.
^ibid., 334.
^Hbid., 328-329; Observations Concerning the Royal Navy and Sea Service," Works, VIII,
337 ff. ; "Of the Art of War at Sea," from the History of the World, Hadow, 100-102.
"Works. VTTI, 335 ff.
^Hbid., 348-349.
Tercentenary of Sir Walter Raleigh 37
peace is gained and maintained.!*^ Thus Ralegli wrote of naval strategy,
"a subject, to my knowledge, never handled by any man, ancient or
modern."-^ The burden of all his writing was that Britain "can never
be conquered whilst the kings thereof keep the dominion of the
seas."2i
Besides a strong navy, England, in Ralegh's judgment, should capture
the trade of the world through the establishment of a great merchant
marine and through alliance with Holland. His "Observations on
Trade and Commerce" ^^ shows a mastery of the details of the foreign
trade of England and other countries and a skill in the use of these
details that surprise one. He shows that England had neglected both
trade opportunities and the merchant marine that should carry her
commerce, allowing Holland, not a producing nation, to outstrip her
and to rival Spain. Once more, the small ship, manned by a few men,
is recommended. By such means, he says, Holland has captured the
trade of France, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Turkey, and the East and West
Indies. 2^ Some towns have nearly a thousand sail of ships. They fish
in British waters and their trade in herring alone runs into millions of
pounds annually, while the English have none. They have near six hun-dred
ships for the lumber trade ; three thousand ships for trade with the
East; two thousand for France, Spain, Portugal, and Italy, while the
English have no ships in that trade. Between five and six hundred
ships are sent to English ports every year, against forty British ships
in the trade with the Low Countries. Lacking timber for construction,
they nevertheless build a thousand ships a year, "yet our ships and
mariners decline, and traffic and merchants daily decay."^^ On the
basis of such facts as these, Ralegh argues for the building of a great
merchant marine and shows how such a policy will bring rich rewards.
His purpose, he says, is "to allure and encourage the people for their
private gain, to be all workers and erectors of a commonwealth; . . .
to make the land powerful by increasing of ships and marines."^^
The rule of the sea, Ralegh holds in another place, belongs rightfully
to Britain. The United Provinces can not take it away, but must seek
an English alliance, and this alliance means the overthrow of Spain.
The Hollanders have won their freedom,
—
But be their estate what it will, let them not deceive themselves in believing
that they can make themselves masters of the sea, for certainly the shipping
of England, with the great squadron of his majesty's navy royal, are able,
in despite of any prince or state in Europe, to command the great and large
^Hhid., 350.
20From the History of the World, Hadow, 102.
2iTForfcs, VIII, 321.
"TForfcs, VIII, 351 ff.
23Trorfcs, VIII, 358.
'*Works, VIII, 358-366.
^Works, VIII, 375.
38 [N'oKTH Carolina Historical Association
field of the ocean. But ... I shall never think him a lover of this land
or of the king, that shall persuade his majesty from embracing the amity of
the United Provinces, for his majesty is no less safe by them than they
invincible by him.26
The sum of his advice is that Britain should keep on good terms with
France and seek open alliance with The Netherlands. Only so may
the hatred of Spain be kept in check, "a hatred more than immortal,
if more can be to our nation and state."^''' "There are only two ways,"
he says, "by which England may be afflicted : the one by invasion, being
put to the defensive, in which we shall but cast lots for our own gar-ments;
the other by impeachment of our trades, by which trades all
commonwealths flourish and are enriched. Invaded or impeached we
cannot be but by sea, and therefore that enemy which is strongest by
shipping is most to be suspected and feared."^^
To make no terms with Spain, knowing that the issue between the
two nations was for nothing less than the sovereignty of the world;
to insure predominance through sea-power, through a great merchant
marine, and through alliance,—these are the principles of foreign
policy that Ralegh insisted on at all times. No matter how remote the
subject of his tract, no matter if he is writing a history of the ancient
world, always he returns to his theme. To Spain he was sacrificed at
length, and his prophecies came true. "For King James," says Oldys,
—
For King James, soon after Ralegh's execution, beginning to see how he
was and would be deluded by the Spaniard, made one of his ministers write
to his agent in Spain, to let that state know they should be looked upon as
the most unworthy people in the world, if they did not now act with sincerity,
since his majesty had given so many testimonies of his; and now of late,
'by causing Sir Walter Ralegh to be put to death, chiefly for the giving them
satisfaction. Further, to let them see how, in many actions of late, his
majesty had strained upon the affections of his people, and especially in this
last concerning Sir Walter Ralegh, who died with a great deal of courage
and constancy. Lastly, that he should let them know how able a man Sir
Walter Ralegh was, to have done his majesty service. Yet, to give them
content, he hath not spared him; when by preserving him, he might have
given great satisfaction to his subjects, and had at command, upon all
occasions, as useful a man as served any prince in Christendom.29
II
The capstone to Ralegh's imperial policy is found in his theory of
colonization. As Hakluyt observed, the original plan was to establish
in Virginia and North Carolina a colonial empire to rival Spain. The
^"A Discourse of the Invention of Ships," Works, VIII, 332. See also "A Discourse
Touching a War with Spain," VIII, 299 ff.
^''Works, VIII, 252.
^Works, VIIT, 302.
^Life, Oxford Edition, I. 568.
Tekcentenary of Sir Walter Raleigh 39
need of money was great, and the beginning difficult, but in time
English commerce would reap untold benefits and the enterprise would
"prove far more beneficial in divers respects to this our realm than the
world, yea many of the wiser sort, have hitherto imagined."'^ ^ But
before this new colony had been firmly established the war with Spain
was on. Ralegh became a member of the national council of war and
threw his whole influence into the work of seeing that the Armada
should be met by a sea-power able to destroy it before the army which
it carried could be landed on British soil. The effect of his pre-occupation
with the direct danger from Spain, which continued in one
way or another for several years, was to divert his attention from
colonization in North Carolina. When he returned to the project of
a colonial empire to rival Spain, it was with the idea that England's
enemy should be supplanted in the very field that he had pre-empted
and from which he had drawn such vast stores.
The issue is clearly drawn in the Preface to the Discovery of Guiana.
Spanish gold, he thinks, drawn from America, is the source of England's
greatest danger. Through colonization Britain can equal or surpass
Spain in revenue, may pass from a state that is always on the defensive
to the primacy of the world. That Ralegh intended to establish an em-pire,
not merely to capture booty, is proved by his method. He did not
need, he says, to suffer such hardships or to bring himseK to poverty.
He gave the natives property of greater value than the gold he received.
He treated them so kindly, and spoke of his Queen so eloquently, that
he drew their hearts to him. His instructions to his men,—to use all
courtesy in dealing with the natives, to offer no violence to women, to
cooperate for the success of their enterprise, show that he was no Tam-burlaine,
bent on ruthless conquest. They begged him to protect them
against the cruel and blood-thirsty Spaniards. They pledged themselves
to serve him and his Queen, whenever he should return to establish
her dominion. They told him how to counteract the deadly poisons used
on their arrows. Even Berreo, the Spanish governor, Ralegh's prisoner,
became his friend and gave him valuable information. And Ralegh's
intrepidity, his eagerness to do what Berreo said was impossible, proved
the courage of the man and his complete absorption in his great adven-ture.
"I would rather have lost the sack of one or two towns," he says
in explanation of his failure to bring back the treasure that was the
real hope of the Queen, "than to have defaced or endangered the future
hope of so many millions, and the great, good, and rich trade which
England may be possessed of thereby. I am assured now that they
will all die, even to the last man, against the Spaniards, in hope of
s^Dedication to Ralegh, quoted by Oldys, I. 88-89.
40 ' JN'oETH Carolina Historical Association
our succour and return: whereas otherwise, if I had either laid hands
on the borderers, or ransomed the lords as Berreo did, or invaded the
subjects of Inga, I knew all had been lost for hereafter."^ i He planned
to send English colonizers to Guiana.^^ And these colonists, the gov-ernors
of the new realm, should civilize the natives by showing them
how to build up cities and become more prosperous than in their un-ordered
life before the English came
:
That the only way to civilize and reform the savage and barbarous lives
and corrupt manners of such people is,
1. To be dealt withal by gentle and loving conversation among them; to
attain to the knowledge of their language, and of the multitude of the special
discommodities and inconveniences in their manner of living.
2. The next is to get an admired reputation amongst them, upon a solid
and true foundation of piety, justice, and wisdom, conjoined with fortitude
and power.
3. The third is, discreetly to possess them with a knowledge of the condi-tion
of their own estate. Thus Orpheus and Amphion were said to draw after
them the beasts of the field, etc. And this must be first wrought by a visible
representation of the certainty, truth, and sincerity of these, together with
the felicity of a reformed estate. All which is but to give foundation, bottom,
and firm footing unto action, and to prepare them to receive wholesome and
good advice, for the future profit and felicity of themselves and their pos-terity.
For the more commodious effecting of this reformation in a rude
and barbarous people, they are to be persuaded to withdraw and unite them-selves
into several colonies; that by it an interchangeable communication and
commerce of all things may more commodiously be had, and that they may
so live together in civility, for the better succour and welfare of one another:
and thereby they may more easily be instructed in the Christian faith, and
governed under the magistrates and ministers of the king, or other superior
power, under whom this reformation is sought.33
It is evident, therefore, that Ralegh's true claim to greatness con-sists
in the fact that he was the first Englishman to sense clearly the
path which Britain was to take. He pointed out the way to the domina-tion
of the sea that made imperial Britain possible. This was the first
pillar in the arch wherethrough gleamed that enchanted world which
had not even dawned upon the imaginations of the governors of the
realm. The second pillar was his conception of colonization, the con-ception
that has made Great Britain a builder of states, not an ex-ploiter
of subject races. The difference between Spanish methods and
Ralegh's methods is the difference between German colonies and the
^Wucovery of Guiana, Works, VIII, 451.
""The Oroonoko itself had long ere this had five thousand English in it, I assure myself,
had not my employment at Calez, the next year after my return from Guiana, and after that
our journey to the islands, hindered me for two years [i. e., after the first voyage 1, after
which Tiron's rebellion made her majesty unwilling that any great number of ships or men
should be taken out of England." Letter to Carew, shortly before his execution. Works,
VIII, 503.
•^The Magnificency and Opulency of Cities," WorTcs, VIII. 541-542.
Tercentenary of Sir Walter Raleigh 41
colonies of Great Britain. Tlie advantage to Britain and to native
races was to be mutual. In all tliat Ralegh liad to say on the subject,
and, what gives greater weight than mere academic theory, in all that he
did, under insuperable difficulties, to give to the creature of his vision
flesh and blood, there lies implicit the philosophy that has made the
British empire a League of Free Nations, the model for a world. Be-side
this accomplishment the record of Philip Sidney is pale and in-effectual.
For Sidney Avas fortunate in his life, and in his death he has
been the inheritor of unfulfilled renown. But Ralegh, forced to spend
his best years in prison, constantly subject to jealousy and distrust, his
first colonial plan destroyed by the conflict with Spain and his second
destroyed by those who plotted his ruin because they thought that he
stood in the way of their advancement, was yet of such indomitable
purpose in his old age, weakened by imprisonment and impoverished
by his enemies, as to sally forth like Tennyson's Ulysses, doubting not,
to use his own splendid phrase about his earlier expedition, ^'but for
one year more to hold fast my soul in my teeth," only to be sacrificed
to the enemy that he had fought all his life. Here are elements of great-ness
that are of the very texture of the fabric of Britain's power.
42 iN'oETH Carolina Historical AssociATioiir
Sir Walter Ralegh as a Man of Letters i
Hy Pbank Wilson Cheney Hersey
Instructor in English in Harvard University
If Sir Walter Ralegh could be witli us today, lie could greet us witli
a phrase that would catfth the spirit of the moment. Great occasions
beget great phrases, and Ralegh had the superb gift—like many other
renowned men of action—of uttering words which seize the imagination.
The shout of Douglas as he hurled the heart of Bruce in front of him
in his last battle, ^Tass first, great heart, as thou wert ever wont";
the exhortation of Cromwell, "Put your trust in God and keep your
powder dry"—these sayings are living literature which spring full
armed from the eloquence of events. As Ralegh stood on the scaffold,
three hundred years ago today, his gift of speech rose to new heights
of glory. "I thank God that He has sent me to die in the light and
not in darkness"—"I have a long journey to go; therefore must take
my leave." Then, having put off his gown and doublet, he called to the
headsman to show him the axe, which not being suddenly done, he said,
"I prithee, let me see it. Dost thou think that I am afraid of it ?" Hav-ing
fingered the edge of it a little, he returned it and said, smiling, to
the sheriff, "This is a sharp medicine, but it is a sound cure for all
diseases." Being asked which way he would lay himself on the block,
he answered, "So the heart be right, it is no matter which way the
head lies." Few men in the last scene of their lives which had been
played on a theatre so extensive and majestic, could find such speeches
as the curtain came down. And if Ralegh were standing here, seeing
the fruits of his prophecy about America, "I shall yet live to see it an
English nation," realizing the new ties that encircle all English-speak-ing
peoples, and rejoicing in the approaching victory over black crime,
his tongue would ennoble the day with a splendid utterance.
Strange that this great Englishman—the greatest Englishman of his
time, except Shakespeare—this soldier, sailor, explorer, colonizer,
should find a place in histories of literature as a man of letters. And
yet not strange, because literature with him was a part of his life
—
what literature ought to be. What he wrote, he wrote because he had
to express his feelings or ideas, his hatred of the arch-enemy, Spain, his
exuberant joy in adventure, his love of a good fight. With such a man
words are acts. "It is easy to find words when one mounts to the assault,"
Rostrand says in Cyrano de Bergerac. Throughout the poems and songs,
^The poems and narratives mentioned in this address, as well as extracts from the Trial
and the Dying Speech on the scaffold, are to be found in the author's Sir Walter Ralegh:
The Shepherd of The Ocean, New York, Macmillan, 1916.
THE BIRTHPLACE OF SIR WALTER RALEGH
Hayes Barton, near Budleigh-Salterton, Devon
RITER FRONT OF DURHAM HOUSE, RALEGH'S LONDON RESIDENCE, 1584-1603
His Study Was in the Little Turret
From a Drawing by Hollar in the Pepysian Library, Cambridge
Tercentenary of Sir Walter Raleigh 43
the narratives of sea-fights, the record of tropical adventure, and later
in the History of the World, Ralegh's telling phrases sprang rapidly to
his lips. Take his Epitaph on Sir Philip Sidney, who died fighting in
Flanders. He expresses his country's grief, but also her pride, in lan-guage
which may be today the elegy of so many who have died for liberty
in Flanders. (I quote a few stanzas only.)
"Whence to sharp wars sweet honour did thee call,
Thy country's love, religion, and thy friends;
Of worthy men the marks, the lives, and ends,
And her defence, for whom we labour all.
Back to the camp by thee that day was brought,
First thine own death; and after, thy ijong fame;
Tears to the soldiers; the proud Castilian's shame;
Virtue expressed, and honour truly taught.
What hath he lost that such great grace hath won?
Young years for endless years, and hope unsure
Of fortune's gifts for wealth that still shall dure:
O happy race, with so great praises run!
England doth hold thy limbs, that bred the same;
Flanders thy valour, where it last was tried;
The camp thy sorrow, where thy body died;
Thy friends thy want; the world thy virtue's fame.
That day their Hannibal died, our Scipio fell,
—
Scipio, Cicero, and Petrarch of our time;
Whose virtues, wounded by my worthless rhyme,
Let angels speak, and heaven thy praises tell."
Remember these lines wherein speaks heart of oak
:
"England doth hold thy limbs, that bred the same;
Flanders thy valour, where it last was tried."
Again, take the Verses found in his Bible in the Gate-house at West-minster,
written out in full the night before his death (including six
lines composed earlier in his life, but now traced again with what
pathos we can imagine, and completed with a new couplet) :
"Even such is time, that takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with earth and dust;
Who, in the dark and silent grave.
When we have wandered all our ways.
Shuts up the story of our days;
But from this earth, this grave, this dust,
My God shall raise me up, I trust!"
44 ISToKTH Carolina Historical Association
"O Cruel Time" lie liad begun, years before, ^ow be voices the
final, dispassionate judgment, "Even sucb is time." Witb wbat sim-plicity,
and yet witb wbat stately music, tbe poem proceeds. Tbe new
lines at tbe end tbrow a balo of religious feeling over tbe entire piece.
Kalegb's poetry differs from tbat of bis fellow Elizabetban courtiers.
It is not "literary"; it is not filled witb tbe elaborate filigree of tbe
conceits of tbe time ; it does not savor of tbe closet and tbe tiring-room.
Tbe tbree adjectives applied to bis poetry by bis contemporary Putten-bam
in tbe Arte of English Poesie ten generations of critics bave not
improved upon: "For dittie and amorous ode, I find Sir Walter
Ralegb's vein most lofty, insolent, and passionate." And tbese qualities
arise from Ralegb's own pride and impatient nature.
Tbere is notbing tbat we sbould call sweetness of soul bere; tbere is
no tender sympatby for tbe patbos of life; again, tbere is no sense of
illusion or of mystery, no glamour of unreality. Ratber tbere is a bit-terness,
a contempt for sentiment. He cuts life down to tbe bone and
be finds tbe bone—bard. His poetry is tbe dramatic expression of bis
emotion of tbe moment, bis antipatbies, bis cynicism, bis disgust. "If
all tbe world and love were young," be says in tbe reply to Marlowe's
song The Passionate Shepherd to His Love. Perbaps tbat one line
sums up Ralegb's attitude : "If all tbe world and love were young."
Wbat a world-old and world-weary cbill ! Marlowe's sbepberd bad sung
:
Come live with me, and be my love;
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and valleys, dales and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountain yields.
And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.
And I will make thee beds of roses,
And a thousand fragrant posies;
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;
A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Fair-lined slippers for the cold.
With buckles of the purest gold;
Tercentenary of Sir Walter Raleigh 45
A belt of straw and ivy-buds,
"With coral clasps and amber-studs:
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me, and be my love.
The shepherd-swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May-morning;
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me, and be my love."
And to this innocent optimism Ralegh replies
:
"If all the world and love were young,
And truth in every shepherd's tongue.
These pretty pleasures might me move
To live with thee and be thy love.
But time drives flocks from field to fold.
When rivers rage and rocks grow cold;
And Philomel becometh dumb;
The rest complains of cares to come.
The flowers do fade, and wanton fields
To wayward winter reckoning yields:
A honey tongue, a heart of gall,
Is fancy's spring, but sorrow's fall.
Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy beds of roses,
Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies.
Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten,
—
In folly ripe, in reason rotten.
Thy belt of straw and ivy-buds.
Thy coral clasps and amber-studs,
—
All those in me no means can move
To come to thee and be thy love.
But could youth last, and love still breed;
Had joys no date, nor age no need;
Then those delights my mind might move
To live with thee and be thy love."
In another poem, As You Came from the Holy Land, he says:
"Know that Love is a careless child,
And forgets promise past;
He is blind, he is deaf when he list,
And in faith never fast.
His desire is a dureless content,
And a trustless joy;
He is won with a world of despair,
And is lost with a toy."
46 ^KToRTH Carolin-a Historical Association
The courtier who has learned from long experience speaks in these lines
:
"Fain would I, but I dare not; I dare, and yet I may not;
I may, although I care not, for pleasure when I play not.
You laugh because you like not; I jest when as I joy not;
You pierce, although you strike not; I strike and yet annoy not."
Ralegh's passionate love of justice, however, his hatred of treachery,
blazed forth at the crises in his life. Early in favor with Elizabeth,
he was often out of favor. When he was committed to the Tower (1592)
by the Queen, who discovered that he was in love with Elizabeth Throg-morton,
one of her maids of honor, he wrote the twenty-first and last
book of his long poem Cynthia. The frenzy of grief which he expresses
at being debarred from the presence of the Queen is the language of ex-aggeration;
but Ralegh, with his desire to be foremost and to exceed
all men, undoubtedly exaggerated for the pure love of dazzling. It was
probably these bitter experiences at court that brought forth The Lie,
a poem which flashes with scorn and anger:
"Go, Soul, the bodj's guest.
Upon a thankless arrant:
Fear net to touch the best;
The truth shall be thy warrant:
Go, since I needs must die.
And give the world the lie.
Say to the court, it glows
And shines like rotten wood;
Say to the church, it shows
What's good, and doth no good:
If church and court reply,
Then give them both the lie.
Tell potentates, they live
Acting by others' action;
Not loved unless they give,
Not strong but by a faction:
If potentates reply.
Give potentates the lie.
Tell zeal it wants devotion;
Tell love it is but lust;
Tell time it is but motion;
Tell flesh it is but dust:
And wish them not reply,
For thou must give the lie.
Tercentenary of Sir Walter Raleigh 47
Tell physic of her boldness;
Tell skill it is pretension,
Tell charity of coldness;
Tell law it is contention:
And as they do reply,
So give them still the lie."
Immediately after the disgraceful perversion of justice called a trial,
by which Ralegh was condemned to death after the accession of James
the First (1603), his spirit flamed forth in The Pilgrimage. Written in
the shadow of death, this poem first voices his hope of salvation, and
then in the second haK flays the treachery of those who had done him
to death. I^othing in Ralegh has more serene beauty than some of the
lines in the first part of this poem. There is a preternatural simplicity,
a Pre-Raphaelite naivete in his picture of the heavenly land.
SIR WALTER RALEGH'S PILGRIMAGE
"Give me my scallop-shell of quiet,
My staff of faith to walk upon,
My scrip of joy, immortal diet.
My bottle of salvation.
My gown of glory, hope's true gage;
And thus I'll take my pilgrimage.
Blood must be my body's balmer;
No other balm will there be given;
Whilst my soul, like quiet palmer,
Travelleth towards the land of heaven;
Over the silver mountains,
Where spring the nectar fountains:
There will I kiss
The bowls of bliss;
And drink mine everlasting fill
Upon every milken hill.
My soul will be a-dry before;
But after, it will thirst no more.
Then by that happy blissful day.
More peaceful pilgrims I shall see,
That have cast off their rags of clay,
And walk apparelled fresh like me.
I'll take them first
To quench their thirst
And taste of nectar suckets.
At those clear wells
Where sweetness dwells.
Drawn up by saints in crystal buckets.
48 !N'oRTH Carolina Histoeical Association
And when our bottles and all we
Are filled with immortality,
Then the blessed paths we'll travel,
Strowed with rubies thick as gravel;
Ceilings of diamonds, sapphire floors.
High walls of coral and pearly bowers.
From thence to heaven's bribeless hall.
Where no corrupted voices brawl; j
No conscience molten into gold,
No forged accuser bought or sold,
No cause deferred, no vain-spent journey,
For there Christ is the king's Attorney,
Who pleads for all without degrees,
And He hath angels, but no fees.
And when the grand twelve-million jury
Of our sins, with direful fury.
Against our souls black verdicts give,
Christ pleads His death, and then we live.
Be Thou my speaker, taintless pleader,
Unblotted lawyer, true proceeder!
Thou givest salvation even for alms;
Not with a bribed lawyer's palms.
And this is mine eternal plea
To Him that made heaven, earth, and sea,
That, since my flesh must die so soon.
And want a head to dine next noon.
Just at the stroke, when my veins start and spread.
Set on my soul an everlasting head!
Then am I ready, like a palmer fit.
To tread those blest paths which before I writ.
Of death and judgment, heaven and hell.
Who oft doth think, must needs die well."
But in hours wlien fortune v^as smiling and Kalegh's heart was not
chilled by baseness and ingratitude and stratagems, he could glow with
warmth and sincere admiration. He could praise, none more majes-tically.
Witness his magnificent sonnet on Spenser's Faerie Queen, the
nobility of whose music won imitation by Milton:
"Methought I saw the grave where Laura lay,
Within that temple where the vestal flame
Was wont to burn: and, passing by that way,
To see that buried dust of living fame,
Whose tomb fair Love and fairer Virtue kept.
All suddenly I saw the Faerie Queen,
At whose approach the soul of Petrarch wept;
And from thenceforth those graces were not seen,
Tercentenary of Sir Walter Raleigh 49
For they this Queen attended ; in whose stead
Oblivion laid him down on Laura's hearse.
Hereat the hardest stones were seen to bleed,
And groans of buried ghosts the heaven did pierce:
Where Homer's spright did tremble all for grief,
And cursed the access of that celestial thief."
Recall, too, the Epitaph on Sidney, and the sonnet to Sir Arthur Gorges,
one of his captains in the voyage to the Azores, which has these lofty
lines
:
"Change not! To change thy fortune 'tis too late:
Who with a manly faith resolves to die,
May promise to himself a lasting state."
As a poet, then, Ralegh is a surprising figure. He would be more
surprising if we had the twenty lost books of his poem Cynthia, which
must have amounted to ten or fifteen thousand lines. This was praised
by Spenser, v/hen the tv/o poets read their poems to each other at Spen-ser's
house in Ireland and wrote admiring sonnets about each other's
epics. It was Raleigh who presented Spenser to the Queen. It was
Spenser who gave Ralegh the title of "the Shepherd of the Ocean,"
which so picturesquely sums up Sir Walter's exploits on the sea. And
the lines in which this title is introduced trail the seaweed after them
:
"The Shepherd of the Ocean by name,
And said he came far from the main-sea deep."
"Far from the main-sea deep" he sailed with untarnished flag. Run-ning
down the trades, coursing the hot Carribean, sweeping the blue
waters of the Azores, breasting Cadiz Harbor, he did all gallantly, com-peting
for posts of danger, and setting his eyes on the bright blazon of
honor. Of his capture of Fayal, he says, "The truth is, that I could
have landed my men with more ease than I did; yea without finding
any resistance, if I would have rowed to another place; yea even there
where I landed, if I would have taken more companie to helpe me.
But, without fearing any imputation of rashnesse, I may say, that I
had more regard of reputation, in that businesse, than of safetie. For
I thought it to belong unto the honor of our Prince and ISTation." And
at Cadiz, "I was resolved to give and not take example for this service;
holding mine own reputation dearest, and remembering my great duty
to her Majesty. With the first peep of day, therefore, I weighed anchor,
and bare with the Spanish fleet, taking the start of all ours a good
distance." A good fight and a fair fight, and a high rivalry in being
first to strike and first to win! How Raleo;h's heart would burst with
50 I^ORTH Carolina Historical Association
rage against tKe barbarous German submarines wbicli liave foully mur-dered
living and beloved sbips with tbeir precious human burden,
and have
"The multitudinous seas incarnadined,
Making the green one redT
And what did the Shepherd of the Ocean write about his sea? Un-fortunately
no songs of^ sailormen, no witching poems caught from the
kiss of foam. (We regret that.) But rather sea-fights and voyages, the
clash of cutlasses, the salvos of cannon ! The most famous of these prose
narratives is A Report of the Truth of the Fight about the Isles of
Agores, this last summer, hetwixt the Revenge, one of her Majestie's
Ships, and an Armada of the King of Spain (1591). It was this account
of the last fight and death of Sir Richard Grenville, Ralegh's cousin,
that inspired Tennyson to write his ballad The Revenge. The story of
the exploration of Guiana appeared in 1596: The Discovery of the
large, rich and beautiful Empire of Guiana, with a Relation of the
great and golden City of Manoa, which the Spaniards call El Dorado.
In the same year he wrote A Relation of Cadiz Action—a report writ-ten
immediately after the defeat of the Spanish fleet in Cadiz Harbor,
where all the English commanders vied with each other in leading the
attack and Ralegh outstripped the rest.
These narratives of Ralegh's are the work of a man of action in
action. They might have been written while on the deck of his ship
with a quill dipped in tar. As he says, he "neither studied phrase,
forme, nor fashion." He did not carve his sentences in alabaster: he
cut them out with his sword. Sometimes hacked them, too. Often the
unity of them disappears; and we have the breathless effect of rapid
talk, afterthoughts quickly added, so eager is he to tell us all the ring-ing
circumstances. As here, in the fight of the Revenge
:
"Unto ours there remained no comfort at all, no hope, no supply either of
ships, men, or weapons; the mastes all beaten over board, all her tackle cut
asunder, her upper works altogither rased, and in effect even shee was
with the water, but the verie foundation or bottom of a ship, nothing being
left over head either for flight or defence. Syr Richard finding himselfe in
this distresse, and unable anie longer to make resistance, having endured
in this fifteene houres fight, the assault of fifteene several Armadoes, all by
tornnes aboorde him, and by estimation eight hundred shot of great artillerie,
besides manie assaults and entries. And that himself and the shippe must
needes be possessed by the enemie, who were now all cast in a ring round
about him; The Revenge not able to move one way or other, but as she was
moved with the waves and billow of the sea: commanded the maister Gunner,
whom he knew to be a most resolute man, to split and sinke the shippe;
Tercentenary of Sir Walter Raleigh 51
that thereby nothing might remaine of glorie or victorie to the Spaniards:
seeing in so manie houres fight, and with so great a Navie they were not
able to take her, having had fifteene houres time, fifteene thousand men, and
fiftie and three saile of men of warre to performe it withall."
It is tlie words themselves that enchant us, the words that ride boldly
on the tossing weaves of his sentences. The phrases glint with the sun.
The tropical splendors of The Discovery of Guiana charm our eyes.
"I never saw a more beautiful country, nor more lively prospects; hills
so raised here and there over the valleys; the river winding into divers
branches; the plains adjoining without bush of stubble, all fair green grass;
the ground of hard sand, easy to march on, either for horse or foot; the
deer crossing in every path; the birds towards the evening singing on every
tree with a thousand several tunes; cranes and herons of white, crimson,
and carnation, perching in the river's side; the air fresh with a gentle
easterly wind; and every stone that we stooped to take up promised either
gold or silver by his complexion."
A voyage full of marvels is this, as any voyage in quest of El Dorado
—
the Gilded King and the Golden City—has every romantic right to be.
These marvels Ralegh sets forth in words which are brushed w^ith gold.
They kindle our imagination as they kindled Shakespeare's.
"Next unto Arui there are two rivers Atoica and Caura, and on that branch
which is called Caura are a nation of people whose heads appear not above
their shoulders; which though it may be thought a mere fable, yet for mine
own part I am resolved it is true, because every child in the provinces of
Aromaia and Canuri affirm the same. They are called Ewaipanoma; they
are reported to have their eyes in their shoulders, and their mouths in the
middle of their breasts, and that a long train of hair groweth backward
between their shoulders."
This picturesque w^onder Shakespeare seized upon when he wrote the
story of Othello's adventures
:
"Wherein of antres vast and deserts idle.
Rough quarries, rocks, and hills whose heads touch heaven,
It was my hint to speak,—such was my process,
—
And of the Cannibals that each other eat.
The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads
Do grow beneath their shoulders." Othello: I, 3.
The Amazons, that warlike race of women, throw their bewitchment
over the pages. A mountain of chrystal and a super-l^iagara amaze us.
Alligators swarm the Orinoco—grotesquely decorative.
"We saw in the river divers sorts of strange fishes, and of marvellous
bigness; but for lagartos, it exceeded, for there were thousands of those
52 ISToETH Carolina Historical Association
ugly serpents; and the people call it, for the abundance of them, the River
of Lagartos, in their language. I had a negro, a very proper young fellow,
who leaping out of the galley to swim in the mouth of this river, was in all
our sights taken and devoured with one of those lagartos."
And always just beyond our reach the Golden City lures us
"Manoa, the imperial City of Guiana." Here reigns the Gilded King
himself, called El Dorado by the Spanish conquistadores because of a
dazzling ceremony. "When they are anointed all over, certain servants
of the emperor, having prepared gold made into fine powder, blow it
through hollow canes upon their naked bodies, until they be all shining
from the foot to the head." To this goal of so many adventurers Sir
Walter never came. He did indeed discover evidences of gold mines,
he made a large map of the Orinoco, and he became convinced that
England should possess Guiana.
"Those commanders and chieftains that shoot at honour and abundance
shall find there more rich and beautiful cities, more temples adorned with
golden images, more sepulchres filled with treasure, than either Cortes found
in Mexico or Pizarro in Peru. And the shining glory of this conquest will
eclipse all those so far-extended beams of the Spanish nation."
The story of these voyages and battles should be read by every
American. We too often forget that these Elizabethan exploits are a
part of our own history ; that they are the exploits of our own ancestors.
The fight of the Revenge was our fight. The victory over the Spanish
Armada was our victory. We circled the globe with Drake in the
Golden Hind. We are the breed of the Shepherd of the Ocean. Our
grand fleet—the combined fleet of Anglo-Saxon folk—is today the bul-wark
of the world.
When the death of Elizabeth came in 1603, the shadow of the axe
swept over the poet and courtier, the soldier and voyager. The days
of action were over : now followed the period of contemplation
—
thirteen years in the Tower. And Sir Walter, over fifty years of age,
sat down in his cell to write—oh, soaring ambition ! oh, superb confi-dence
!—the History of the World. This work is the greatest monu-ment
of his literary fame. Ralegh saw the stream of the world in the
large. He conceived history as a gigantic unit, as a stupendous moral
drama. "We may gather out of history a policy no less wise than
eternal; by the comparison and application of other men's fore-passed
miseries with our own like errors and ill deservings." In the account
of Jerusalem, Babylon, Assyria, Macedon, Greece, and Rome, he em-phasizes
the retribution which overwhelms "great conquerors and other
troublers of the world" who disobey the laws of God and man.
Tercentenary of Sir Walter Raleigh 53
Ralegh had always been a scholar and patron of learning. lie never
went to sea without a chest of books to read when no Spaniards were
in sight. Now that he was confined to quarters in the Bloody Tower,
his reading became intensive. He cites in his History no less than six
hundred and sixty authors. Many subjects engaged his attention and
he wrote many treatises, political, philosophical, and military, among
which are: The Prerogative of Parliaments in England, The Prince,
or Maxims of State, The Cabinet Council, Observations concerning the
Royal Navy and Sea Service, and A Discourse on War in General.
Several of these as well as the History itself Ralegh wrote for the
instruction of Henry, the young Prince of Wales, who was much
attached to him. ^'Who but my father," cried the Prince, "would keep
such a bird in a cage !"
Voluminous as were the writings of those long years of imprison-ment,
only the History of the World was published in his lifetime. This
took rank at once as a superb masterpiece. It was the first great his-torical
work in English. It exercised a strong influence on the Puri-tans.
It nourished many of the finest spirits of the succeeding age
—
Hampden, Cromw^ell, Montrose.
The book itself is a pageant of monarchies. Ancient kings and
queens sweep past us; the drums and tramplings of innumerable con-quests
resound from afar. The wreck of empires is shot through with
bright interludes of Ralegh's own experience—the Battle of Moncon-tour,
the capture of Fayal, the tactics of the Armada. His prose is
clothed in regal state, and his style swells to the mighty theme of God's
punishment of cruel and unrighteous monarchs. His majestic organ-note
can best be appreciated if his opening lines on the attributes of
God, and his last page, the Apostrophe to Death, are read aloud in
a cathedral.
"It is Death that puts into man all the wisdom of the world, without
speaking a word, which God, with all the words of his law, promises, or
threats, doth not infuse. Death, which hateth and destroyeth man, is be-lieved;
God, which hath made him and loves him, is always deferred; I
have considered, saith Solomon, all the works that are under the sun, and,
tehold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit; hut who believes it, till Death
tells us? It was Death, which opening the conscience of Charles the Fifth,
made him enjoin his son Philip to restore Navarre; and king Francis the
First of France, to command that justice should be done upon the murderers
of the Protestants in Merindol and Cabrieres, which till then he neglected.
It is therefore Death alone that can suddenly make man to know himself.
He tells the proud and insolent, that they are but abjects, and humbles them
at the instant, makes them cry, complain, and repent, yea, even to hate their
forepast happiness. He takes the account of the rich, and proves him a
iDeggar, a naked beggar, which hath interest in nothing but in the gravel
54 E'oRTH Carolina Historical Association
that fills his mouth. He holds a glass before the eyes of the most beautiful,
and makes them see therein their deformity and rottenness, and they ac-knowledge
it.
eloquent, just, and mighty Death! whom none could advise, thou hast
persuaded; what none hath dared, thou hast done; and whom all the world
hath flattered, thou only hast cast out of the world and despised; thou hast
drawn together all the far-stretched greatness, all the pride, cruelty, and
ambition of man, and coyered it all over with these two narrow words,
Hie jacetr
The pulse of balanced sentences, the sonorous tones, the magnificent
cadences—were they not the rhythms of surging waves echoing in his
ears and reverberating in his Devon heart, as he sat writing in his
cell—silent but for the lapping of Thames-ripples at the Traitors'
Gate?
*1 > '^'?)
- X^\
! ,^-«%
Tercentenaey of Sir Walter Raleigh 55
Raleigh's Place in American Colonization
By Charles M. Andrews
Farnam Professor of American History in Yale University
I value the opportunity which you have given me today of taking
some part in recalling the memory of one, who though never an actual
participant in the upbuilding of this town and state, has a high place
among those Avhom you like to hold in grateful remembrance. Sir
Walter Raleigh never set foot upon the soil of this country, yet he
stands in your annals as one of the founders of North Carolina, pro-moter
of colonization on its shores, and projector of the "great city
of Raleigh," that shadowy precursor of the greater city of Raleigh to
come, which by virtue of its name will ever remain a permanent monu-ment
of Raleigh's place in your minds and hearts. It is no part of
my purpose here to deal with the life of the man whom you have thus
signally honored or with the colony which he established—the lost
colony of Roanoke. I must leave to others the treatment of these invit-ing
topics and confine myself to the more limited, yet no less impor-tant
subject of Raleigh's place in American colonization. The theme
is one of great dignity and significance, and associated as it is with
the larger problems of colonial settlement has a charm and fascination
that are peculiarly its own.
The variegated fabric of American colonization is woven of many
colors representative of the diversified motives and influences that
stirred the men of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to risk their
lives and their fortunes in the western seas. Some freighted their keels
with the pure lust of excitement, seeking novel experiences in a world
enwrapt with mystery and charged with that irresistible attraction
which ever lures men onward toward the unknown. Some sought treas-ure
and booty, aroused by the exultant hope of riches from mines of
gold and silver and seeing in the plundering of Spanish plate fleets not
only a royal road to fortune but an opportunity also for revenge on
the Spanish colossus, which threatened England in the Great Armada
and lay athwart the path of her mariners in the waters and shores of
the central Atlantic. Some with an eye to a more legitimate profit
deemed the islands and coasts of the western world a lucrative field
for the investment of capital and hoped for returns on their outlay
that would double their fortunes and furnish an ample supply of those
tropical commodities that were fast becoming a necessary part of the
Englishman's daily life. Some, a noble and inspiring band, with their
eyes raised to Heaven but not eschewing the things of this world, came
as wandering pilgrims, seeking a refuge from religious persecutions
56 IN'oETH Carolina Historical Association
and an opportunity to worship God in their own way. Some, though
their numbers were never large, wanted political freedom, and driven
from England by the autocratic methods of the second Stuart, en-deavored,
often blindly, to apply their ideas of government in a new
world. And some, by far the most numerous of all, hampered and
harrassed by political ruler and landed proprietor in their efforts to
earn a living for themselves and their children in their native land,
and seeing across the Atlantic boundless areas of unoccupied soil and
no less boundless opportunities for the planting of homes and the rear-ing
of families, came not for booty or profit or for religious and
political freedom, but for the one purpose of solving that most impor-tant
of human problems, the problem of existence.
All of these motives and impulses were directly or indirectly at work,
aiding in the great task of building up a new society on the soil of
America. Those w^ho acted under the pressure of these influences served
each in his own way the cause of trans-Atlantic colonization and deserve
each according to his accomplishment the praise and recognition that
belong to the pioneers in a mighty historical movement. JSTo single
force impelled these men or the women who came later to leave home
and country, endure long and harrowing voyages, and face danger and
frequently death in order to take up their habitation in a frontier land
of islands and continent across three thousand miles of tempestuous
sea. To establish permanently upon the shores of the western Atlantic
the first tiny settlements that mark the beginning of this republic of
ours required the combined activities of hundreds and thousands of
stouthearted men and women, possessed of many differences of mind
and body, of many gradations of physical courage and spiritual faith,
and of many sorts of experience accumulated through more than half
a century of failure and success. Those who endured and survived were
not merely the founders of a nation, they were as well the last actors
in a struggle, characterized by glorious, soul-stirring enterprise, that
had long been pre^^aring the way for final success and permanent
settlement.
The forerunners of colonization in America were in their way as
necessary to the attainment of the desired end as were the actual
colonists themselves. They were the real pioneers to whom it was given
to spy out the land, observing the coasts and testing the waters, and
to narrate, often in glowing terms the wonders of the deep and the
richness and beauty of soil and country. They mapped out the path of
western advance ; in their small vessels of limited tonnage, they learned
of winds and tides, reefs and shoals, and rivers and harbors ; in their
reports they told of their experiences, pictured the marvels and curiosi-ties
of the new countries, described the flora and fauna of the regions
Tercentenary of Sir Walter Raleigh 57
they visited, and gradually filled in the hitherto unknown spaces of
the great canvas of the West with scenes of actual people and actual
life. Theirs were the labor and skill that developed a terra incognita
into real waters, lands, and peoples; that transformed a world of
imagination into a world of facts, a world of mystery and darkness
into a world of knowledge and light, an El Dorado into an America.
Just as we owe eternal gratitude to those who opened the gateway to
our middle and farther West—to Gist, Boone, Clark, Lewis, Fremont,
and the Oregon pioneers—so Ave owe equal gratitude to those who
opened the gateway to the JSTew World, the western frontier of the
maritime states of Europe, who "blazed the trail" across the waters in
the face of winds and storms, braving fogs and treacherous currents,
as appalling as the terrors of the western wilderness, and threatened
by corsairs and pirates, avenging Spaniards and crafty Algerines, who
were as much to be feared as were the red men of the forests.
To this era of forerunners, to this preparatory period in the history
of American colonization belongs the figure of that illustrious man,
whose death on the scaffold on October 29, three hundred years ago,
we are met here today to commemorate. Sir Walter Raleigh belongs
to that dim, half mythical period of American history, the period of
discovery and exploration, which is filled with the deeds of individual
heroes, daring and reckless men, and stands in striking contrast to
the later and more prosaic period of actual colonization. To the
Englishman at home the J^ew World of Raleigh's day was still an
El Dorado ; the seas were still peopled by monsters ; the lands were
dotted with cities of fancied magnificence and emboweled with mines
of fabulous wealth; and men's dreams of the tropical world were as
strange as were their superstitions, their belief in portents, their ex-planation
of the mechanism of the human body, and their interpre-tation
of the solar system and other phenomena of nature. The age was
one of discovery in more ways than one, but it was easier to explore
the earth's surface than it was to penetrate the mysteries of the human
anatomy or to unravel the laws governing the movements of sun and
tide, earthquake and storm. Though Raleigh was able to sail overseas
and to see much and to hear more of that which concerned the lands
beyond the western horizon, he died three years before Harvey an-nounced
to his fellow-men the epoch-making discovery of the circulation
of the blood ; and he suffered in his death from laws that were as crude
in their application to social and political life as were the reasons men
gave three centuries ago for the familiar phenomena of the physical
universe.
The literature from which we gain our knowledge of the adventures
and exploits of this age of romantic activity is closely akin to that
58 I^ORTH Carolina Historical Association
which tells us of similar happenings in the childhood of other peoples
than our own. Our epics and sagas are the tales and chronicles of
voyages, told by the participants themselves or taken down at their
dictation. These prose epics of the English and American nations,
some of which came from Portuguese, Spanish, and French sources,
were collected, often translated, and finally published by that lovable
press agent of adventure, ^Kichard Hakluyt of Oxford and Westminster,
himself one of the leaders of the western movement, because though
only a humble preacher and gatherer of other men's tales, he turned
by means of his publicity the thoughts of his contemporaries toward
the glories of the western world. These voyages or "principal navi-gations,"
as he calls them, are veritable Odysseys of the sea, stories of
wandering suffering, brave deeds and famous victories, calamities, suc-cesses,
and sudden deaths, and like all personal narratives, unsupported
by official or other authentic evidence, are frequently open to suspicion
as containing sometimes less and sometimes more than the facts, did
we know them all, would warrant. For we must remember that very
few official records appear to substantiate the chronicles of voyages
—
a few patents and letters of marque, a few entries of returns to the
royal exchequer, an occasional reference to state interference, when
in excess of zeal against Spain, privateers in so-called "voyages of
discovery" made trouble for the crown or its ministers and involved
the government in some perplexities of policy. In this period of storm
and stress, when the young English nation, rapidly growing to man's
estate, was moved by the Crusader's zeal for excitement and experience
in a larger world, the state took neither lead nor responsibility, con-tenting
itself with sanctioning or condoning private enterprise and
sharing in some of the profits of marauding expeditions. Later when
the state entered the field and assumed control of colonies that private
energy had established, official records steadily increased and the per-sonal
narrative gave way to sources that bear an official stamp. The
place of the saga was taken by the authoritative record and the age
of the Elizabethan adventurer merged into the period of organized
colonization and permanent settlement.
Of the many conspicuous individuals of this age of personal prowess
none was more pre-eminent than the versatile, resourceful, and cour-ageous
Sir Walter Raleigh or more loyally devoted to his sovereign and
his country. Raleigh filled his part, at one time or another, as poli-tician
and courtier, soldier and sailor, historian and philosopher, with
adroitness, bravery, and wise circumspection. He knew the ways of
the court and played the gallant to his queen with the same ease that
he trod the deck of his ship, or appeased his mutinous sailors with
promises of wealth from mines and galleons. He was daring even tO'
Tercentenary of Sir Walter Raleigh 59
recklessness in his efforts to find in Venezuelan territory the gold of
Manoa and judicially calm as lie gazed out over the world from his
prison room in the Tower and essayed to write with dignity and dis-passion
the history of the human race. He could dissimulate with the
true instinct of a courtier when involved in the intrigues of the court
and the whims of his royal mistress, yet he could face the block with
an openness of soul, from which all untruth was purged, and utter that
noblest of all his sayings, true epitaph of his better self, "What matter
how the head lie, so that the heart be right." There is no one connected
with American history who possessed and exercised such a variety of
gifts as did this philosopher, writer, courtier, and traveler of Eliza-bethan
England.
But his very versatility had its dangers and limitations. Raleigh has
nowhere identified himself with great issues or forward movements in
politics, religion, diplomacy, or social relations. His place in literature,
though assured, depends upon a few lyrics of exceptional sweetness,
on a narrative that is possessed of considerable descriptive power, and
on passages in his history of the world that are of striking beauty and
philosophical breadth—in all a very slender output. He possessed a
powerful personality, which will always arrest the world's attention
because of the interest which all men have in lives of dramatic action;
and he claims our sympathy because of that eternal instinct for justice
which is aroused for a man who is a victim of a state policy controlled
by a pedant king and upheld by the vicious principle that one is guilty
unless he can prove himself innocent. Yet when all is said, the fact
remains that Raleigh's chief claim to the attention of the historian
lies in the share which he had in the discovery and colonization of the
'New World. He was in very truth one of the charter members of the
most important experiment in colonization that the world has ever seen,
an experiment that not only has brought into existence this rich and
powerful republic of ours, but also has transformed a small island
kingdom into what is likely to become a far-flung British imperial
federation of self-governing nations, scattered in all parts of the world,
yet held together by bonds of sentiment and loyalty that are stronger
than the strongest of political and legal ties. Whoever had part in
this, the most important movement of modern times, has secured for
himself a permanent place in history.
Raleigh combined in himself three types of adventurous activity.
First of all, he promoted voyages of plunder and discovery; secondly,
as registered sea-captain, he himself sailed into the heart of the Spanish
Caribbean, leading expeditions in search of the gold of Guiana; and
lastly, he inaugurated one of the first English attempts to establish a
colony on American soil. Thus he was capitalist, sea-dog, and colonizer
60 l^OKTH Carolina Histoeical Association
in one, covering in his ambitions more varieties of enterprise than any
one else of his day. He never circumnavigated the globe, as did Drake
and Cavendish; he had no such tragically venturesome career as had
his cousin, Sir Richard Grenville ; and he never personally shared in
the life of a colony, as did William Penn and some of the Calverts.
But he covered a wider range of overseas undertakings than any of
these, and justly earned that appellation bestowed upon him by his
friend, the poet Spenser, of "Shepherd of the Ocean."
There is an absorbingly interesting painting by Sir John Millais
which represents the boy Walter, sitting with a companion on the
rocks at Budleigh Salverton in South Devonshire, gazing with rapt
attention at a bronzed and hardy sailor, muscular and weather-worn,
who as he spins his yarn of adventure points with enthusiasm toward
the western horizon lying beyond the sweep of ocean visible in the
background, ISTo one seeing this painting can but feel the zest of desire
that filled the souls of the boys and men of Elizabethan England.
Raleigh was born and bred in Devonshire, that land of bold mariners
and early maritime activity; he was related to many Devonshire and
Cornish families, trained to the sea and familiar with its delights and
its terrors; and he was thoroughly acquainted with the coming and
going of men and ships from the nearby towns of Bristol, Plymouth,
Dartmouth, Barnstaple, Bideford, and other centers of sea-faring life
and experience, so well known to readers of Kingsley's stirring tale,
Westward Ho. It is little wonder that one who was so early steeped
in the lore of the West should have been at all times a sailor at heart
and should have displayed through life a yearning and love for the
sea that betrayed itself not only in his actions but in his writings also
whenever he had opportunity to give it expression. He was twenty-six
years old, t